Branding 2010 - Make It Real

Well, Happy New Year everyone. For those of us who had our eyes even partially open, I think everyone can agree that in terms of branding, 2009 is a year best left alone. So much happened, and at the same time, so little.

It started off with one of the best brands of all coming alive - Barack Obama. Riding on a wave of much needed optimism, Barack led the county back into feeling good about the future. He was of course met with another brand. Perhaps not as strong, but definately one that has made itself just as memorable - Sarah Palin. Are we seeing the forces of good and evil play themselves out? Is this just some of the best staging anyone outside of Hollywood ever created? Whichever, way this goes, the Obama and Palin brands are sure to be in the forefront of our psyches for a long, long time.

After that, the brand of the United States of America was a strong contender for most notable. With it's financial markets crashing, it's real estate bottoming out, and it's moral fiber running thin, the US of A hit a low-point in terms of it's brand. Wait a minute - that might have happened in 2008. No, no, the first strike happened in 2008, but with the continued issues hitting like Katrina, Americans in all sectors realized that this was no '80s style recession, this was something far worse and far deeper. Everytime the world lost a brand like Pontiac, Kodachrome, Saturn, Max Factor, even Gourmet magazine - America took a hit. I wouln't even go into the Tiger Woods debaucle that ushered in the last month of the year, but it all showed the world just how vunerable a country and it's brand can be; if it's not protected and cared for. [Seriously, did your wife really chase you down the street swinging a gold club? Dude...]

On the bright side, 2009 brought us Twitter, a stronger Google, and a show that yes, even if our markets are bottoming out, we'll spend our children's legacy to bring them back. [really. Really? Yes, really] So I guess it does show us that if we're willing to spend enough, anything can happen. Are you listening Detroit? Oh, yes, you already did that....

So how about this? Let's just brand the old year as "2009 - Not what we anticipated..." As for the new year? As for 2010? How about this? Let's just try to protect the brands we love by making them real. If Ford wants to go green - great, we'll read it in your ads, but we'll wait for it to show up in your cars before the jump on the band wagon. If Burger King wants to go thin? Great - we'll believe you as soon as we see a burger with fewer than 1,000 calories. If Visa wants to be our partner, show us some interest rates that at least have a toe touching reality.

Let's brand 2010 with the tagline of "2010 - Make it real"

Green Ideas That Make Business Sense

Every once in a while you come across a company that is shifting their brand in very real ways. It's often the simplest things that make the biggest difference in how a company and a brand is perceived. It's what I call taking the brand off the drawing board and bringing it to life.

For all those people who look at outdoor advertising as a blight on America, I ask you to check out what Fuel Outdoor in Miami has done. It's created a deal with the city of Miami to build 600 solar powered bus shelters. Yes, it gets to sell the advertising space on these locations, but hey, that's 600 bus shelters for people to hide from the sun and rain. Better still, they're solar powered, so the cost of keeping them lit at night is nothing.

So who says creating a green initiative has to cost? Who says it has to be painful for the company? It can be a win for the company [Fuel gets more ad space to sell], a win for the community [Miami gets 600 bus shelters for free], and for the planet [solar, solar, solar which will prevent an estimated 2 tons of carbon emissions from being expelled into the air].

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz explained, “Thanks to a successful public-private partnership, what we have with Fuel Miami is a revolutionary model at work – corporate advertising dollars are being used to clean the environment.”

“As outdoor advertisers, we are sensitive to the quality and appearance of the city’s environment,” Freedman said. “In the case of our Miami bus shelters, we felt it was necessary to ensure that our advertisements could provide benefits to not only our clients, but also the city.”

Not a bad thing for everyone involved....