BrandNg

Good morning. You might be Canadian.

Is this how Canadians really think of themselves? This funny little youtube video was issued by the Government of Canada, claiming that you might have woken up as a Canadian citizen today. The WSJ points out that it's interesting that they are using YouTube to reach this diffuse and hard to track audience.

For those of you who already know that you're Canadian: the video is missing baggy pants (dragged down by the enormous weight of loonies and toonies in your pocket), a heaping serving of poutine, homo milk, Labatt's, Celine Dion, Alex Trebek and a Tim Horton's cup which has a rim that one can rrroll up. Glad they got the touque and the photo of the queen though.

AOL sold to Intuit!?

Brand guardians around the world are shaking their heads at AOL's homepage today, which either marks the beginning of the end of all things, or is a positive innovation, depending on your point of view.

For taxday, the "O" in the AOL logo morphs into a TurboTax checkmark, and when clicked, leads you to WalletPop, AOL's finance site. Wallet Pop is completely sponsored by TurboTax, at least for the day.

I'm not too worried. After all, Google has been peddling itself to the powerful Halloween lobby for years. And some of Google's pitched ideas are even better than the ones they've used.

Slightly Surreal Public Attack on Blockbuster.com GM @ AdAge Conference

At the Ad Age Digital Conf. today: Bob Barr, the newly hired GM of Blockbuster.com, participated in an "Open Idea" forum. As it was the last session, many attendees started filtering out and maybe that was for the best. 

The "Open Idea" forum was intended to allow attendees to "help" Barr with his marketing challenges.  He would essentially tell the crowd about his problem and then ask the crowd for suggestions.  Barr opened by asking Netflix subscribers to raise their hands (about 60% of the crowd?) and then asked Blockbuster Online subs to do the same (2 hands out of a few hundred).  Anyways, Barr basically lambasts his own company, proving (convincingly, I might add) that Netflix has outpositioned Blockbuster, that Blockbuster Online products have better value but are misunderstood by the marketplace, and that there's lots of mentions of Blockbuster in the media/blogosphere, but most of it is centered around new releases and/or discussion of the fate of the parent company.  He said he was going to "bare his soul" and he wasn't kidding.

So Barr starts fielding suggestions from the crowd, but the Q&A-style format is all wrong.  People start suggesting things like:

• Make it easy for Netflix subs to switch by grabbing information out of their queues and
• Create a new sub-brand because you just proved to us that BB's brand basically sucks.  

Barr is left to defend what he's already doing and every suggestion comes across like an attack.

A lady who introduces herself as a Corporate PR person laments, "you're letting your own story spin out of control.  You need to do some real PR.  You need to KISS: keep it simple, stupid." 

Jonah Bloom, Editor of Ad Age, is trying to moderate.  He tries to lighten things up by playfully suggesting that Blockbuster should create an online brand without the 'e' (i.e. "BLOCKBUSTR") to match flickr and tumblr.  It gets a nice laugh, but Bloom's efforts are largely futile.  Barr was too good at pointing out the faults of his own company and is unable to get a real dialogue going with the crowd--he was like a wounded animal that needed to defend every comment.

Finally and mercifully, someone from the crowd says, "You're a hero for doing this," followed by hearty applause from the crowd, me included.  Another person shouts out: "Blockbuster can make a comeback.  I mean if Brittney can do it, so can you!"

Strange Svedka Election Ad

Seen on a bus shelter in New York: Not sure why Svedka proclaims itself "Voted #1 Vodka of 2033."

Either way, this Svedka ad was voted #1 stupidest, most incomprehensible election tie-in ad of 2008-2009. 

A Bank That's Open on a Statutory Holiday!

I saw unusual activity inside a bank this afternoon. There were actually customers inside! Yes, it's true, TD Bank (was Commerce Bank) was open for business on MLK, a postal holiday.  I guess that's what happens when Canadians take ownership of "America's Most Convenient Bank".

Next thing you know, TD will be open on American Thanksgiving as well.  After all, like MLK, the last Thursday in November is not a holiday in the Great White North.  If that happens, you can be pretty sure that PC Richard and Sons will write Regis and Kelly a nasty note.

Everyone agrees you are the best.

 

Everyone loves a great fortune and there's a rather amazing fortune cookie search engine at: http://www.fortunehunting.org/search/

It's created by artist Laura Young, whose exhibit at the CUE Art Foundation in New York features an impressive hard-copy version of hundreds of fortunes, on a single board, meticulously classified and linked by sentence structure and theme such as:

"You as a subject": You will... , You have...
"You as an object": Follow you.., Awaits you..
and themes including : Future, Obstacles, and Fortunes for Cats.

The exhibit runs until Jan 24th (2009), but check out the website if you can't make it.

Cake Donuts, Now in the Household and Cleaning Aisle.

In the WTF? department: Entenmann's, the pre-eminent baker of supermarket crumb cakes and chocolate chip cookies since the 50s, has decided to extend its line, from baked goods of last resort (after all, they're available at drugstores and gas stations) to

... candles??!!! Whaat?

Yes, wrapped, in these signature Entenmann's blue and white window boxes, aren't the mediocre pound cakes or cinammon rolls you might expect.  Instead, they contain fragrance facsimiles, in the form of a candles. I'm not sure this is what Martin Lindstrom had in mind when he was talking about brand smells in Buyology.  Or maybe it is exactly what he had in mind.

But even Entenmann's itself is waiting to see if this is a good licensed extension: the candles haven't yet made it to their website.

Either way, here's hoping that Entenmann's will stop short of making these scents into perfumes as I'm not sure the market can handle another food-related personal fragrance. 

One scathing review of the BK Flame Body Spray reads: "This stuff smells like a wicked lactose intolerant fart...I sprayed a little bit on my hand and I've nearly thrown up 7 times already...washing does no good. I've tried everything. I've contemplated cutting my hands off: it's that bad."

Do Novelty Glasses Really Need to Provide a Statement of Quality?

 

This $2 pair of 2009 novelty glasses purports to provide you with UV400 protection. That is, in case you actually wanted to wear a pair of glittery glasses that would make Elton John look subtle by comparison, during a sunny day when people can actually recognize you.

Frankly, I would have been more impressed if that little tag that claimed that the Made-in-China glasses were "Lead-free" or had a warning that read, "CAUTION: You'll never get this glittery shit off your clothes or eyebrows"

About a Horse That Fled

Over the holidays, my parents relayed this little gem.  It's a short Chinese parable:

A farmer had one of his horses flee.  For weeks, he lamented his bad luck.  But by the end of the month, the horse returned, leading a whole herd of horses back to the farmer.  So instead of owning a single horse, he now had many.

The moral of the story: Who's to say that misfortunes are misfortunes?  Who's to say it wasn't good luck?

So as 2008 draws to a close, and as we collectively experience the most challenging environment seen in quite some time, who's to say this period of time hasn't all been good luck?

Happy New Year!  I'm optimistic that our greatest days still lie ahead.

Is Taleb Right About the Weather As Well?

December 2008 will be "remembered" in the Pacific Northwest for a winter blizzard, deemed unexpected by the media while breaking 40-year records in some parts.  Here in Vancouver, a little bit of snow can halt all traffic.  With up to 30 inches on the ground, the city was shut down.  TV news reports claim that there are only a few dozen snow plows for the city: we were unprepared even though we've had a few other major snowstorms in the last 20 years. 

As climate change increases the severity and frequency of atypical weather, will we collectively take a more risk-adverse view?  Will we learn some of the lessons espoused by the Black Swan in financial markets (that severe events happen more often than we think)? Or will we, in the future, simply accept the consequences and perhaps, if taken to the extreme, live with what would be thought of today as an unusually rigorous defiance of the elements? I'll provide updates the next time I see a major snowfall in Vancouver.

Though frankly, I'll be shocked if it ever snows like this again.