Issue: Nike takeover of Converse triples sales, moves away from base
Commentary by: David

The Wall Street Journal today detailed changes in the Converse line stemming from its 2003 acquisition by Nike. WSJ reporter Stephanie Kang notes that among these has been a serious commitment to R&D which has allowed Converse to regain court access (in the 1950′s, Converse dominated pro basketball) with the ‘Wade’.

Nike is quoted in the Journal article saying all the right things. Nike CEO Mark Parker says, “It’s such an iconic shoe that we’re trying to be careful not to overextend it.” Nike has also forced Converse to create a ‘brand book’ that details the brand image and guidelines for using it.

By short-term financial measures, the acquisition has been successful. Converse’s share is up significantly and sales this year are up 12% – ahead of the industry.

Many observers were concerned with this acquisition because of Nike’s spotty record with acquisitions, primarily from the disastrous integration of Bauer, an iconic ice hockey brand. In that case, Nike put the trademark swoosh on the Bauer skates and alienated loyal fans who thought of Nike more as a giant corporation than an innovator.

In this case, Nike has been careful not to add the swoosh. Instead, they’ve made a different mistake. The very mistake Nike CEO Mark Parker is most anxious to avoid. Nike has overextended the Converse brand. How? By adding fashionista offerings to the plain Jane Converse line inlcuding the shearling trimmed sneaker-boots above.

The reasons for this are understandable. Converse has had two brand lives. In its early life, the brand was about performance. Like Nike, the inspiration came from an athlete (Chuck Taylor) who was both a pro basketball player and later a Converse salesperson. The Chuck Taylor put Converse on the map. Ironically, it was the era of Nike with Michael Jordan that knocked Converse off the map and the brand might have died if the Chuck Taylor had not been adopted by a different group. The second brand life grew out of the grunge movement in Seattle where legendary rockers including Kurt Cobaine adopted Chuck Taylors as an anti-fashion statement.

Nike is trying to revive both lives for Converse. They have put significant r&d efforts into getting Converse back onto the court with a new line (Wade). This has been a successful effort and from the persective of this advertising blog it is probably fine for the brand.

Where Nike has stumbled is in the second part of this revitalization. Instead of finding ways to seed Chuck Taylors more deeply into the Gen X post-grungers, Nike has taken the cultural adoption of Chuck Taylors as a license to try to make them glam and hot. In fact, the fur-trimmed Chuck Taylors pictured above look more like Uggs to us and less like the basic walkaround shoes that say ‘cool’ and ‘no b.s.’ at the same time.

It is hard to argue with a brand when they are reaping the rewards of extending their audience. But we believe that Nike has caused Converse – particularly the Chuck Taylor line – to walk away from the base franchise that has protected them for a generation. Our prediction is that Converse will follow the path of Tommy Hilfiger and rise only to fall. A steady build among the faithful would be far better for the brand.

Brand: Genpets (Adam Brandejs)
Execution: Viral, Website, In-Store
Link: click here
Target: Web design firms, ad agencies
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A viral campaign winding its way slowly through the Internet and the Blogsphere and which recently garnered a straight-faced writeup from Tim Nudd at AdFreak (the blog of respected industry publication Adweek). The website looks like slick product/feature/benefit work of any consumer product company except that the product is a genetically engineered pet, a Genpet. The Genpet can be peg-mounted in its plastic, tamper-proof packaging and comes with a heart monitor:

Imagine walking into a department store or any big box store, and while browsing an aisle you find a display where packages hang; which, at first glance, seem to contain large action figures. Upon closer inspection, you realize they are actually bizarre, altered, bipedal mammals sealed in a plastic bubble where they uneasily rest in some kind of induced hibernation.
A series of glowing and beeping heart monitors on the packages gives a hint that they are alive. The rising and falling of their chests as well as their occasional twitching, shaking and clawing, albeit limited by the tie-wraps, which keep them in place, confirms the life of these creatures. They are there, ready to take home and add to your life as the next entertainment gadget; bioengineered creatures, mass-produced, and pre-packaged for your convenience.

The Genpet line (which is made of steel, plastic and microchips but looks eerily real) has actually been placed in a store in Toronto, where it generated the expected reaction:

While in the store window of Iodine Toronto, the shop owner began sleeping in the store as many nights, people would bang at the windows furiously. Some in protest of the small Bio-genetically engineered creatures trapped in plastic, some wanting to wake them up or buy them. Hordes of teens wanting a bioengineered pet met confused, baffled, or even shocked looks from parents.

The purpose for the project appears to be a mixture of commercial art, social commentary and job-seeking by Mr. Brandejs.

What Works:
We chose to review this unorthodox campaign because it is an excellent example of a viral campaign with enough intrigue and drama to create a real groundswell on the blogosphere and we are early enough in this process for our readers to watch this unfold in real time. Even though Genpets was not created to sell a conventional product, the execution by Mr. Brandejs provides a great example for brands seeking to create a big splash on the web. Before we found the backstory behind this campaign, this advertising blog first imagined that this was a viral campaign for an upcoming movie. In fact the Genpets remind us of some of the creatures created for the film The Fifh Element and clearly borrow from the pet-cloning premise of the Arnold Scharzenegger film The 6th Day.

Here’s what works about Genpets as a viral campaign:

1. Attention to detail: Brandejs got all the elements right when crafting this campaign. He created very realistic looking bioengineered pets and sweated the details on the packaging to make it look real and ordinary – a significant feat for an individual.
2. Patience: Without a promotional budget, Mr. Brandejs was forced to do what all good marketers ought to when working on a viral campaign – go slow. By putting up a convincing website and getting placement in a single store in Toronto, Brandejs planted a seed which grew slowly but surely and has reached a variety of blogs and forums. A Google search for Genpets currently returns 59,000 results.
3. Controversy: Genpets works because the premise is controversial and the execution makes it moreso. Putting the Genpets in ordinary plastic packaging like a G.I. Joe intentionally trivializes the issue of creating new life. The implication is that life is disposable. The execution shows us a clear and compelling version of a future we need to think about before it arrives. The tension created by this idea makes it shocking and fascinating.
4. Relevance: This campaign attracts attention and draws controversy because it is highly relevant. One suspects that Mr. Brandejs is no bible-belt Christian conservative (and we confess that we do not know if Canada even has a bible belt) – so the political and social commentary here is even more acute. Timing is everything and this campaign benefits from excellent timing.

What Doesn’t:
Because Mr. Brandejs had seemingly vague PR goals for this campaign, he may be unprepared for the eventual result. We predict CNN coverage within a month and some significant controversy. But on his website, Mr. Brandejs seems to be looking for some exposure as an artist and possibly freelance web progamming gigs. He ought to think carefully about what he really wants because the offers he gets are likely to be in an entirely different league. The lesson for brands here is that it is critical to establish goals for a viral campaign, know what the follow-on will be and have a crisis management team in place in case the virus spreads in unwanted directions.

Executionally, the only misstep we noted in the campaign was the lack of a phone number and corporate headquarters address for Genpets.

Branding Bottom Line:
Creating Genpets to attract freelance jobs is a little like sculpting the Pieta to get into art school. Crispin Porter should hire this guy.

Brand: Brawny (Georgia Pacific Corporation)
Execution: TV, Web Video
Link: TV ad here (it is the second-to-last spot), Web Video here
Target: Soccer Moms
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
The TV spot features the real-life Brawny Man who announces the formation of the “Brawny Academy” where eight women will send the men in their lives for sensitivity training. While announcing this, the Brawny Man chops wood, bottle feeds an injured bird, cleans up messes and makes meals. The website streams episodes of “Brawny Academy” (at press time, only the first episode was available) which is a reality web video series that streams from the Brawny Academy website. It features eight average-Joe-unreconstructed-males with a variety of normal male disorders from sloppiness to couch potatoe indifference to preening self-importance. The Brawny men puts these Joes through their paces to attempt to instill some sense and sensitivity into them.

What Works:
The pace at which web video is catching up with television is staggering and this spot gives us a good window into what is to come. Instead of using a network ad buy to simply build the Brawny brand or engage the consumer, Fallon Worldwide and Georgia Pacific reap a double benefit. For the average consumer, this spot functions effectively as advertising. It has good branding, a product demo and a tangible incarnation of the brand character.

For avid Brawny lovers and the merely curious, however, Fallon takes the next step. Just a year ago, the thought of fully producing a reality show and running it only online would have sounded outlandish. The idea that an advertiser might creating hours of video content would have been similarly absurd. Now it is becoming routine. The Brawny Academy is another important stage in the creation of a new world where content and advertising will undergo many new formulations – both sensible and unholy – before it finds its own level and some new order emerges. The Brawny Academy is very different from other significant recent efforts like Amazon Fishbowl (the online talk show, reviewed here) and Snickers Instant Def (a partially animated dramatic web-serial, reviewed here).

It is difficult to rate Brawny Academy as content because, frankly, reviewing dramatic content is not this advertising blog’s speciality. Brawny Academy strikes us as a bit silly, but then so does The Apprentice. The premise is not terrible, however, and real drama may emerge. More important than the execution in this case is Brawny’s willingness to take a step into the unknown and attempt to forge closer ties to its audience in an emerging medium. For the money, we do find the television spot and web video less alarming than first stalker-like incarnations of the Brawny Man online.

What Doesn’t:
The key issue here is whether Brawny (with the help of parent Georgia Pacific and agency Fallon Worldwide) is really producing desirable content. Doing this with a single brand parent is tricky and may not function as well in the 2000′s as it did with Texaco Theater in the 1950′s. Fortunately, reality television has low production costs and the Internet allows for low distribution costs, so Brawny can afford to experiment. Our sense is that brands attempting to produce original video content for the Internet need to hit the same quality standards as cable networks in order to retain viewers. Executions that are either cheesy or too crassly commercial will end up hurting the brands which sponsor them.

Branding Bottom Line:
Please don’t tell our wives about that Brawny Academy.

Brand: Adidas
Execution: TV, Web
Link: Click Here (click to enter Adidas Soccer Site, and watch movie part I and II)
Target: Soccer Enthusiasts
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
In a dusty Latin American slum, two boys sit in an abandoned alley, kicking a ball against a wall. In Spanish, Jose asks his friend Pedro if he wants to play a game and the boys start picking a fantasy team of some of the world’s best players. As they call each name, the superstars, including Caca (Brasil), Zidane (France) and Beckham (England) trot out but then Jose picks Beckenbauer, the dominant German Midfielder from the 70′s. Pedro laughs for a second, then his jaw drops open as the legendery and youthful Beckenbauer trots out. Jose sends one of the players into goal, makes others change positions and general treats them like pick-up players playing with his ball. The first spot ends with the kickoff of the game. The second spot, which will air later in the World Cup shows the game itself, with the predictably miraculous playing from the athletes.

What Works:
We chose this spot for just one reason: authenticity of voice. In many other ways, this could easily have been another throwaway World Cup spot where we all get to see great players perform amazing feats, but nobody can remember the brand the next day. What separates this Adidas spot from all of the other efforts is the connection it makes to the soccer world experienced by most of its fans – soccer as fantasy. Adidas understands as few others have that soccer is about dreams for over a billion fans worldwide. It gives these ordinary people an outlet for their imagination. Few of them will ever get to play in a World Cup and even fewer will become legends, but every single one of these boys and girls will be transported from the reality of their lives by the fantasy of the beautiful game. This spot does an amazing job of recreating that sense of possibility that Jose feels as a young boy in a tough neighborhood. It shows the power of soccer to transform.

Because the voice is so authentic, so utterly convincing, it does link back to Adidas and to the brand. It tells us that Adidas understands the sport and shares the passion. That is a strong positioning for Adidas against Nike, which is a relative newcomer to the sport and has a lesser claim to being an authentic soccer company.

What Doesn’t:
Spots like this break some of the conventional rules of branding (such as keeping the brand visibility high) by achieving breakthrough levels of attention and engagement from users. They are most successful at energizing the most faithful brand supporters. There is a necessary risk when creating this type of spot and the risk is that it will be art-directed into mediocrity. This has not happened in this case and it is a credit to Adidas. But campaigning such a finely-executed theme can be difficult and would represent a real challenge for a director or agency who are not at a world-class level.

Branding Bottom Line:
Adidas shoots and scores. Unlike the U.S. team.

Brand: Dell
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: CTOs, corporate purchasing directors
Rating: *
Reviewer: David

Description:
This series of new spots from starts with a shot of a Dell Server and continues to describe how Dell can enable businesses. One spot morphs from the Dell Server to a robotic assembly line (in a motorcycle factory), as the voiceover says, “Pure Dell – It’s an uncomplicated approach to increased productivity. With scalable Linux and data management solutions, you can get more real-time information to streamline your supply chain. And it all runs on Dell PowerEdge Servers, featuring the reliability of Intel Xeon dual-core processors. So growth isn’t just a goal – it’s a given. That’s the direct path to success. That’s pure Dell.” The spot ends with a Pure Dell logo and the Intel logo and trademark sound.

What Works:
This spot has some impressive graphic effects as the camera moves seamlessly through the factory walls of the motorcyle plant. All of the spots in this campaign feature similar effects.

What Doesn’t:
With this campaign, Dell seems to be learning the wrong lessons from Microsoft and IBM, who have both launched major campaigns that do little for their respective brands.  In many ways, though, this campaign is worse as it is neither as coherent as the Microsoft ‘People-Ready’ ads nor as engrossing as the IBM ‘Not like anybody else’ effort.  Instead, Dell gives us a product shot of a server followed by a mind-numbing jumble of corporate computer-speak – all set in someone else’s workplace.  The voiceover for these spots make it sound as if Dell has randomly cut and pasted phrases from corporate IT magazines together onto the ad copy board.  Using ‘scaleable, streamline and supply-chain’ in the same sentence just about guarantees that your message will go unheard, even by those who might understand it.

This is a shame because Dell was for some time an oasis of real consumer brand-building in the desert that is the high-tech industry.  “Dude, You’re Getting a Dell,” was not an inane slacker manifesto – it was a statement of a brand’s commitment to quality that was simple and profound.  Unfortunately, the brand appears to have stepped away from both the commitment and the reality in recent times.  This new campaign does not overpromise – in fact it does not promise at all.  It attempts to link Dell to business success in various ways without being at all specific about why Dell is uniquely positioned to help.  The only brand that is helped by these Dell spots is Intel which at least benefits from the endorsement.

These spots may be a mess simply because they are using the wrong medium to reach their target audience of IT managers and chief technology officers.  Television is a bad way to engage this target not only because it is expensive and vastly overreaches, but because it is one-way and that is not how these high-status individuals prefer to be approached.  Talking to a CTO at home about work is an intrusion – even if you find the right person, you have done it at the wrong moment.  From this perspective even print advertising would be preferable to television, although we think the real solution is online.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dude, what happened to my Dell?

Brand: Dunkin Donuts
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (It is the last spot)
Target: Working People
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
This spot for Dunkin Donuts starts with a father pushing his son off on a bike as he sips an iced coffee. The soundtrack is a male choral anthem, “Yes! Doin’ things is what I like to do. Yes! Doing things is what I like to do. Yes! I’m slightly more productive now than previous because I’m slightly more efficient than I previously was. Doing things is what I like to do.” In a compressed version of small-town America, we see people going about their everyday lives with the help of Dunkin products. A mailman, housepainter, movers, guy waiting at the bus-stop, two guys playing chess, two office guys carrying files, a clown entertaining children, a tow-truck driver, a roofer, cops in a police cruiser, a sidewalk entertainer, a little league baseball team, some power walkers and a construction worker in a manhole. The voiceover concludes, “Dunkin Donuts – it’s how everyday people get things done every day. America Runs on Dunkin.” The last is the tagline and is displayed onscreen with the logo.

What Works:
There is a cheerful energy to this spot and a kind of ‘morning in America vibe.’ There is also a lot of branding as virtually every working person in the spot is carrying a Dunkin Donuts product. It is unusual and not likely to be copied by competition.

What Doesn’t:
As upbeat and innocuous as this spot seems, it is a disaster on several levels. The first is the most obvious – brand positioning. The tagline “American Runs on Dunkin,” combined with the product placement (which favors coffee drinks 4-1 over donuts) and faux-Norman Rockwell Americana imagery suggest that Dunkin is trying to position themselves as the ‘get going’ brand for working class America. This is fundamentally a coffee positioning. And Dunkin may have good reason to want to push the coffee. This advertising blog suspects that coffee might be more of a destination item for Dunkin than donuts and undoubtedly contributes more to overall profitability, as the new private equity owners of Dunkin must have noticed when giving direction to Hill Holiday, the agency on Dunkin. Unfortunately, this is a losing position for Dunkin, which should be capitalizing on the misfortunes of Krispy Kreme instead of running away from Donuts. Whether most people buy donuts or not, the chain is called ‘Dunkin Donuts’ and can only really be an expert in donuts, not coffee. Putting too much focus on coffee in advertising risks driving consumers upmarket to Starbucks. We agree that Dunkin must stand for something, but this isn’t it.

A more subtle but not less serious flaw with this advertising is the casting of the spot. Dunkin has a largely male target audience. Therefore, those brilliant, highly-paid private equity people have made the obvious suggestion to the agency that most of the people in the spot ought to be men and not just any men but working men, just like the target audience. The agency has executed against this mandate so well that they have created a world where every single working person is a man (there are only a handful of women in the spot and none of them are working). In fact, some of the child care roles are reserved for men here, too, as the spot starts with the father sending a child off to school on her bike.

We’re not sure what school of advertising the new owners of Dunkin Donuts subscribe to but they obviously think very differently than the beer industry about what appeals to working class men. And in this we find the final irony. In its over-earnest attempt to engineer a pure, cheerful salute to smalltown America and working class male values, Dunkin Donuts has produced a bit of fluff that looks like nothing so much as a Village People video – a gay anthem song. The effect is certainly unintentional, but no less striking.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dunkin Donuts goes for Miller country and winds up in the Y-M-C-A.

Brand: Snickers (Mars, Inc.)
Execution: Webisode
Link: Click Here
Target: Teens
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Snickers and BBDO make a significant online foray with this five-part web series of short films using a combination of animation and live video starring members of the Black Eyed Peas. The premise of the series pits old school Hip Hop against its successors. The Instant Def characters represent the old school culture and are matched up against Boo-T crew who are the representatives of the money driven ‘bling’ culture. In the first webisode, streaming now, the Instant Def crew is shown up by their rivals the Boo-T crew. When they return to their jobs at the Snicker’s factory a mysterious transformation takes place.

What Works:
This webisode is a much better use of the online medium than much of the video that ripped directly from television and slapped up on the web. It is web-exclusive and deftly combines elements of video, anime and graphic novel animation techniques to create a unique and ownable environment.

Snickers has good branding within this webisode, both from its omnipresence above the display window and its integration into the plot (which in the first webisode seems a bit pro-forma but works well enough.)

What is the brand positioning for Snickers? It is not completely evident in the first webisode although it seems like Snickers will give the extra energy to Instant Def that they need to compete with the Boo-T crew. This is consistent with Snickers longterm positioning, if not completely ownable.

The most important aspect of this campaign is a willingness on the part of Snickers and BBDO to try to understand the web and its consumers on their own terms rather than just adapting content from other media to fit the smaller screen.

It is also helpful that this webisode series actually addresses a meaningful conflict within the music world and a clash between two different values.  By identifying itself with the more anti-commercial, traditionalist old-school movement, Snickers sends a good message about value.
What Doesn’t:
Many of these initial web projects, with the notable exception of Amazon Fishbowl, feel light on content, as if the producers are afraid of overwhelming the short attention spans of online viewers. While this advertising blog cannot be prescriptive and define the ideal length and depth of web video and webisode content, we strongly suspect that Snickers could go deeper with the characters and plotting and longer with the duration of these webisodes. We predict success for them because of their famous characters and good production values but we also believe that the bar will begin to raise quickly on original web content.

Branding Bottom Line:
Snickers asks and the Peas do it.

Issue: How does product placement affect the credibility of the media property and the brand?
Commentary by: David

A typical product placement – this one on the season finale of NUMB3RS – raises the question for us of the effect of paid but undisclosed endorsement on brand equity. In this case, the placed product was a Dyson vacuum cleaner. The product was well integrated into the story line. The premise for this series is an FBI agent whose brother is a genius mathematician. In this storyline, the mathematician brother points to the Dyson vacuum and describes how its vortex suction works, then moves on to a mathematically similar method for solving the crime at hand. This is about as good as product placement gets since the Dyson is woven into the plot and the character takes a moment to explain the product. Dyson supplemented the placement with advertising (which we have reviewed previously here) which reinforces the brand message.

Two things tip us off to the fact that we are witnessing a paid product placement – one is integral to the placement itself, the other is not. The unavoidable tip-off is the appearance of the Dyson with the logo in closeup. The avoidable tell is the presence of Dyson ads during the episode. Both work together to make the placement memorable but evident. And therein lies the problem.

Product placement is a tricky game. It is a combination of advertising and publicity. It is advertising because it is paid for and not ‘earned,’ as news stories featuring brands are considered to be. On the other hand, product placement has the implied endorsement benefit that can work harder than advertising if it is handled correctly, and in this way it is more like PR. To work well, though, this paid endorsement must look like unpaid, naturally occuring story content. The more brazen and obvious a product placement, the less authentic it feels. When a product placement is too glaring or evident (as some of the placements on The Apprentice have been deemed to be), it loses the implied endorsement benefit and may actually generate a backlash.

The problem is that product placement is paid advertising, not unpaid endorsement. So making it work effectively means deceiving consumers to keep them from understanding the relationship between the brands featured on a television show (or in a movie) and the producers of that entertainment. And deceiving the consumers has many perils, not the least of which is the peril to the brand if the paid placement is revealed.

This creates a real problem for any enduring brand. Yes, it may be very straightforward to buy placement for a brand and that placement may help strengthen the brand equity. But if the increase in consumer interest comes as a result of deceiving the consumer, then the advertiser may risk suffering a significant backlash if the commercial relationship between the media property and the brand is revealed. In most cases, it is the opinion of this advertising blog that the risk is not worth the effort at deception. Unless the placement can be openly disclosed, but still effective (like Tiger Woods wearing Nike which is an open paid placement and endorsement), the brand benefits at great peril. Although it may work for some period of time, deceiving the consumer is bad business.

Brand: Amazon Fishbowl (Amazon.com)
Execution: Web Video
Link: Click Here
Target: Amazon Users
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Amazon introduces a weekly talk show airing only on the Amazon homepage featuring comedian Bill Maher and interviews with authors, musicians and filmmakers. The first episode which began airing this week features bestselling author Dean Koontz, Darnelia Russell, Ward Serrill and a performance from the Dixie Chicks.

What Works:
Amazon joins the web video fray in a novel an unexpected way that turns the concepts of ‘retailer’ and ‘content provider’ upside down. From a branding perspective, Amazon is trying to solve a classic retailer dilemma – how to become a more regular destination for already-loyal users. Since Amazon cannot sell milk, it was forced to be more creative. The Amazon Fishbowl is a clever and creative solution to this dilemma. The idea itself is good but not unforseeable, but the execution is excellent. If Amazon had picked a lesser talent, or less-known talent to host the Fishbowl, the result would almost certainly be failure. But Bill Maher is an inspired choice (although not perfect as he seems to be something of a technophobe himself and constantly refers to the show as being ‘on the computer’ which sounds to this advertising blog about as anachronistic as saying ‘going steady’ would be) and gives Amazon Fishbowl instant gravitas that it could not have commanded with an unknown or b-lister.

Amazon also shows its savvy with good integration between the interviewees and their products. When Dean Koontz is being interviewed, you can buy his book by clicking on a link just below the video window. This is a great example of closed-loop marketing.

Another smart touch by Amazon was to create an advertising model for Fishbowl. Instead of supporting the show entirely on their own, Amazon sold commercial advertising in Fishbowl and Cingular is the first advertiser (with a spot we reviewed this week). This is obviously a smart cost-saving move for Amazon, but it shows a great deal of institutional wisdom as well. If Amazon had left the Fishbowl to survive on its own without advertisers, the value of the programming would come down to very narrow metrics, like increased user return rates and purchase rates of the featured products. There would also be the danger of turning Amazon Fishbowl into a high school public access channel effort, where the quality of the programming would be in continual peril of degrading depending on the political whims within the organization.

By creating a revenue base for the show, Amazon makes it its own business, and gives it a chance to command the attention and respect it deserves within the organization. This keeps the stage clear for future innovation and continued investment in the media property.

What Doesn’t:
Amazon cannot assume that this program will find a nitch solely on the strength of Bill Maher’s personality. There is a fine line separating a show with interesting author, director and artist interviews and an Amazon version of the Home Shopping Network where the viewer is being un-subtly prodded to buy whatever Amazon is trying to get rid of that week. Like any other brand, Amazon fishbowl must decide what it stands for, what its attitude is and how it will be perceived by viewers and carefully stick with that positioning over time. The novelty of Fishbowl along with its placement on the Amazon home page will give it a solid viewership for the time being. To survive in the long run, however, Fishbowl will have to find and fill a need for its viewers.

Branding Bottom Line:
Somehow Amazon uses TV on the Internet to sell books. We still wish we had bought stock.

For those of you who might wish to meet the ThirdWay Advertising blogger, here are three upcoming events at which he will speak:

June 3rd, New York City: Fired Up Marketing

June 15th, New York City: Web Video Conference (use promo code ‘ThirdWay’ for a discount)

June 26-27th, Los Angeles: Marketing to the Mass Affluent Conference

Look forward to seeing you!