This week our guest expert is Susan Gunelius, author of Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon.

1. In your new book you analyze the Harry Potter phenomenon. What part did the personal story of J.K. Rowling play in the success of the book?

J.K. Rowling’s personal story actually played a big part in the initial success of the Harry Potter brand.  Her rags-to-riches Cinderella story was a goldmine for the press who ate it up and spit it back out to anyone who would listen.  As the brand grew, more and more people became intrigued by the first-time author/poverty-stricken single mother who wrote a book that so many people were talking about, thus generating more word of mouth marketing and more sales, but without that initial attention from the press, the brand may not have taken off the way it did.  We’ll never know.

I didn’t realize when I first started researching Harry Potter that the online buzz played such a significant role in the success of the brand.  Blogs were just starting out when Harry Potter began picking up steam.  At a time when most companies and brands were trying to crush that type of citizen journalism, J.K. Rowling and Scholastic embraced it.  Of course, their first reaction was to bring lawsuits against bloggers and fan sites, but they quickly realized that the power of what would eventually come to be known as the social web was too big to turn their backs on.  By letting the online conversation grow and flourish, the brand did, too.  In other words, by letting consumers experience the brands in their own ways, talk about it, and live it, the brand thrived beyond anyone’s expectations.

3. Is there also a lesson about the unexpected benefits of blogging that you can share here?

This goes back to the power of the social web and the early recognition by J.K. Rowling and Scholastic of the power of the online buzz that played a big part in the ultimate success of the Harry Potter brand.  Companies and brands are still not 100% supportive of bloggers, but they can hold an enormous amount of influence.  The success of Harry Potter by way of a strong online buzz, fueled primarily by bloggers and fan sites, is evidence of that.

4. What is your take on the Motrin Moms controversy?

As the mother of 4-year old triplets, I can say without a doubt that I don’t carry my kids as a “fashion accessory” as that Motrin ad implied.  With that said, I think the controversy is another example of the power of the social web wherein a vocal few can influence many (you know the old phrase, “the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” regardless of how right or wrong that is).  It goes back to the old shampoo commercial from the 1970s, “and she told two friends, and she told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on…,”  The only difference is that today messages travel much faster, and influential bloggers, whose posts get syndicated, appear high in search rankings, etc., have the ability to reach a broad audience very quickly.  Marketers have to be careful to be politically correct these days, to a point where it’s nearly impossible not to offend someone.  It’s a challenge that’s far more difficult today with the existence of the social web than it was even a decade ago.

5. What is your favorite online marketing initiative right now?

The first one that popped into my mind is one that I just wrote a blog post on my company blog this week .  It’s about the new JCPenney viral video, Beware of the Doghouse.  The video and corresponding website were created to support the JCPenney in-store jewelry center.  The video is funny and timely, and the interactive website is really amusing.

6. What did you learn as a marketer from the U.S. Presidential campaign?

Branding consistency and inclusive marketing are more important than ever.  I wrote a post about that on my blog, too.

7. 3 Tips for Entrepreneurs in a recession?

To build business - keep networking (online and offline).  To save money - ditch your website and replace it with a Wordpress CMS site and use freelancers and open source applications.

8. One book in addition to Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon that you’d recommend?

My copywriting book, Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps.

9. One online resource you could not do without?

Google - I use it for so much - search, email, applications, Alerts, Reader, YouTube, AdSense, AdWords - you name it.

10. Your favorite brand for the month?

I’ve been on an Apple kick lately.  It’s such a great example of relationship branding and societal branding.  I even fell victim to Apple’s marketing messages and got a Mac a couple of months ago.  Now, if only I could get an iPhone without AT&T as the carrier, but that’s another story, entirely.

Brand: Routan (Volkswagen)
Execution: TV, Online, Print
Target: Parents
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
To promote its new minivan, the Routan, Volkswagen agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky created a mock-documentary featuring Brooke Shields entitled “Routan Boom.”  The four-minute online documentary anchors a campaign also featuring tv spots and print ads.  The premise of the documentary is that couples are having children just to have an excuse to get the “German engineering” found in the Routan.  The various couples Brooke Shields approaches all deny this, but she is unconvinced.

What Works:
This campaign brims with ironic humor.  Brooke Shields excels in her deadpan impersonation of a documentary reporter unflustered by the lack of any real story.  It is very difficult to imagine many spots for a minivan having any interest past the core viewership of parents currently shopping for a new car, but this spot expands the pool.  It has been successful in drawing some media attention and blog posts.

What Doesn’t:
The premise of the spot may have a fatal flaw.  As Autoblog notes, “It’s likely that the Routan is a perfectly fine minivan, maybe even markedly better than the Dodge Caravan and Chrysler Town and Country, but does VW honestly think people won’t realize it’s true origins?”  Premising an advertising campaign - even a satirical one - on a factually incorrect concept is deceptive and will not help Volkswagen in a time of great hostility to automakers.

Branding Bottom Line:
The Volkswagen Routan is actually Mili Vanili.

Brand: Dodge (Chrysler, LLC)
Execution: TV, Online Webisodes, Viral
Target: Pickup truck buyers
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
A multi-part webisode series produced by BBDO and directed by Tony Scott (director of Top Gun and brother of Ridley Scott).  The Dodge Ram Challenge is essentially a reality show where four two-person teams compete in a series of four races in new Dodge Ram pickups.  The teams are each composed of men from a single profession: contractors, cowboys, firemen and military.  The races involve extreme challenges of the sort often seen on television advertising - except that they are navigated in stock Dodge Rams with real people driving.  The campaign is viewable by webisodes but Chrysler is using significant advertising to drive traffic, including a major presence on NFL football.

What Works:
Brands can create and distribute interesting content without tv networks when they spend the time and money to get top talent.  Brand-based reality television has been done before (Brawny Academy by Fallon, for one), but Tony Scott and BBDO take it to another level with the Dodge Ram Challenge.  Scott understands that small touches create the atmosphere for real drama and he adds the sleek black military-style chase helicopters, pump-action shotgun as a starter pistol and a variety of scary-looking challenges to this series.  As with any webisode, only a fraction of the Ram purchase demographic will ever view the series.  But Dodge realizes that brand recognition is not really the game here: they are looking to convince people already contemplating a purchase to take the next step, which is no small task during a recession.  The Dodge Ram Challenge also helps the brand build authenticity against its key rival - the new Ford F150.

What Doesn’t:
You really have to enjoy reality television to appreciate this series.  Dodge also took the risk that they’d be filming on of their vehicle drop an axle or be demolished altogether.  While they might have elected not to show this footage, news of its existence would certainly have leaked. So this was a high-stakes gamble in more ways than one.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dodge boosts our testosterone just as the economy drains our wallet.

Brand: Planned Parenthood
Execution: E-mail/Viral
Target: Pro-Choice Voters
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
An e-mail campaign urging people to support Planned Parenthood with a small donation, but with a twist.  The e-mail reads as follows:

Hi allI don’t know how you feel about Planned Parenthood, but this is a great idea.  I just did it myself, and feel fantastic about it.  Simple, fast & cheap.  And toward a great cause.  Pass it along…Instead of (in addition to?) us all sending around emails about how horrible she is, let’s all make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin’s name. And here’s the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You’ll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate–Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular “Donate Online”

Brand: Microsoft
Execution: TV
Target: Mac-vulnerable PC Users
Rating: **
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Microsoft’s new Crispin Porter & Bogusky advertising continues with a new campaign intended to show the diversity of PC users.  “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype” is the opening line of the spot, delivered by a John Hodgman lookalike (Hodgman is the actor who plays the PC in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” spots by Apple).  The spot then progresses to showing a variety of people, from celebrities like Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra to astronauts, scuba divers and ordinary people.

What Works:
This is a very interesting attempt to take a common political campaign tactic and bring it to the consumer arena.  The tactic is the “Checkers” ad (from Nixon who once complained that the press was so vicious that they were attacking the gift of a cocker spaniel to his daughters) which complains that the opponent is running a dirty campaign and smearing the candidate.  This type of ad is also a negative ad, of course, as it attempts to impugn the character of the opponent.  Microsoft here is trying to turn the tables on Apple’s successful anti-PC campaign by showing that every type of person uses PCs and that the Apple ads are unfair.

This advertising is far more focused than the brief but expensive campaign that preceded it featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.  These spots also feel crisper with better pacing.

What Doesn’t:
What you almost never see in political campaigns is a candidate who has the support of 90% of voters attacking a challenger with 10% support.  That’s exactly what’s happening here and it reflects the extent to which Apple’s unyielding campaign against Microsoft has rattled Redmond and caused them to respond.  This campaign is well-executed, but fundamentally misguided.  It adds credibility to Apple’s message by acknowledging it and will likely get some people wondering if there’s something to those Macs after all.

The campaign is also misguided because it tries to solve a strategic problem with advertising.  Windows Vista gave PC users something they were not asking for - a more elegant operating system that was less reliable than Windows XP.  This in itself was a reaction to Apple.  Microsoft should have ignored Apple and focused on a more elementary need of PC users - a faster, simpler and more flexible operating system which would be more reliable and adaptable than Windows XP.  Had Microsoft turned in this direction, Apple would have been irrelevant as a competitor.  They would have ceded the high end to Apple while digging a firmer foothold in the everyday world where 90% of computer usage happens.

As it is, Microsoft has given Apple a major strategic opportunity with the Vista debacle.  And now Microsoft is wasting nearly $800 million dollars trying to fix the strategic problem with advertising.  Add that to the $500 million already spent to advertise the Vista launch and you have enough money to accelerate the next generation operating system launch by several years.  Microsoft should stop letting Apple and Steve Jobs push them off of their game and create a “Windows lite.”  Then they can brag.

One last problem with the ads - and this is the only one that Crispin Porter is really responsible for - is that they lack permission to believe.  Watch the Apple campaign and you’ll see that each ad gives specific reasons that Apple is better than PC.  There are no specifics in this Microsoft campaign.

Branding Bottom Line:
There’s a reason that P&G greats like Dawn and Tide never mention competitors.  See you at the debates, PC bitches.

Jonathan Salem Baskin, author of Branding Only Works on Cattle, is fast becoming the new Bad Boy of Branding.  We don’t always agree with him, but we are certainly entertained by his unique and irreverent viewpoint.  We asked Jonathan ten questions that are vexing us right now:

1. What is the biggest problem with branding as it is practiced today?

   It’s mostly useless.  Branding is glorified awareness, if that, and it’s more notable for what it doesn’t do, like drive sales, support higher prices, or improve customer satisfaction.  For all the talk of engaging customers, branding is inward-looking; it addresses absolutes of what marketers want it to be, instead of getting applied to outwardly-relevant behaviors that are motivating to consumers

2. Is a brand really just a shortcut – a way for consumers to save time?  What does that mean for marketers?

   Not any longer.  Brand was info shorthand in the days when consumers didn’t have ready access to information a la the web, nor did they have the collective experience of having had their grandparents and parents targeted by aggressively inventive marketers.  Brand doesn’t fill gaps in knowledge anymore; it emerges from consumers, and is a collection of info, opinion, experience, and intent.  This means that marketers need to address the context of those moments in order to be relevant and useful.

3. Comment on Sarah Palin from a marketer’s standpoint

   Utterly brilliant.  And the potential voters’ remorse has a 4-year tenure with no requirement for effective customer service.  The point is to win an election, and reducing her to a simple USP is crass, smart marketing.
   

4. What is the worst ad you’ve seen this summer?  Why?

   The Korean Air campaign continues to befuddle me.  A man or woman stands against a mostly-white background with a slash of green-blue color, over which some nonsense text says nothing about airlines, flying, etc.  It makes absolutely no sense, although I’m sure it’s totally ‘on brand.’

5. What do you think of the hype over social networks?

   It’s hype.  The idea that we’d replace the ‘interruption model’ of advertising with the ‘distraction model’ of social media is rather laughable; pointless conversations are, well, pointless.  But seen as true communities wherein information is shared and vetted, I think social media can and will be a powerful tool for helping consumers define brands.  The challenge is to stop talking about “joining the conversation” and focusing instead on “giving it direction.”

6. Do you Twitter?

   Nope.  Ambient noise is still noise, to me.  And I can feel close to people I know without knowing that the cup of coffee they just got served isn’t hot enough.  As for the acquaintances I barely know, I’m comfortable barely knowing them.

7. Give us five brands to watch for 2009 …

   Microsoft: how will they waste more money?
   Google: how will they react as privacy and consumer groups realize they want to rule the world?
   B of A: how will it get Mainstreet America to invest hard-earned dollars in stocks?
   Sears/Kmart: how will the stores capture recession-conscious consumers who would otherwise go to WalMart?
   Apple: how will its competitors knock off its latest branding, and fail to understand it’s all about the interface?

8. One piece of advice for a new marketer?

   Think behavior.  If anybody tells you that something is ‘good for the brand,’ attach an active verb to it, and see if it makes sense in a sentence that begins “Our customers will do X which will yield Y…”
   

9. Finish the sentence:  If I were creative director of a NY Advertising Agency right now …

   …I’d figure out how to get creative about getting people to do things, not just think them.”

10. How will the end of Wall Street affect marketers?

    It’s not the end, just the beginning of a new phase.  The real impact of the Wall Street meltdown will be to further drag down the overall economy, and make corporate leaders scared to spend money.  This will mean lots of marketers…especially those purists who hold tenaciously to the abstractions of brand…will lose their jobs.

Brand: Microsoft
Execution: Television (”Shoe Circus” , “New Family“)
Target: Insomniacs
Rating: *
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
A new campaign for Microsoft features Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld experiencing life in the real world.  In the first ad, “Shoe Circus,” Seinfeld spots Gates in a discount shoe store.  He immediately takes over from the lackadaisical clerk and fits Gates for a pair of shoes.  This process takes 1:33 - a huge block of time by advertising standards.  The second ad, “New Family” has Seinfeld and Gates moving in with an average American family to try to understand how they live.  It doesn’t go well, and the pair are eventually set up by the pre-teen daughter and evicted.  Microsoft has already announced that this campaign has ‘run its course’ and will be replaced by an ad mocking the successful “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ad campaign from Apple.

What Works:
Precious little.  This ad functions almost as a signature for the style of Crispin Porter + Bogusky in its lack of focus, persuasion or relevance.  However it did draw much more attention than the failed $500 million campaign for Windows Vista.  See this Advertising Blog’s original advice for Microsoft on that campaign here.

What Doesn’t:
Microsoft (with help from Crispin Porter) spends a huge amount of money to remind us of the central failings of Windows: it runs slowly, is out of touch with average people and seems old and dated.  These are the only definitive impressions from nearly 6 minutes worth of primetime advertising.  The ads focus on two men who are no longer doing what they’re famous for.  Bill Gates -  who has left the helm of Microsoft to head the Gates Foundation - and Jerry Seinfeld - who long ago closed his hit sitcom.  The ad portays the two men on an ironic quest to try to understand average people.  They seem to comically fail to do this in both spots.

However the executional choices in the ad give the average viewer all the clues he or she needs about Microsoft.  The ad is as long as Vista boot times.  It’s as unfocused as the thousands of unnecessary features that slow down Microsoft Office.  And it’s as out of touch as Microsoft customer support.

Microsoft advertising ought to be focused on what Microsoft is doing to actually improve our interactions with the personal computer.  This ad only reminds us that we’ve had little choice for many years but to fork over hard-earned money and suffer.

Branding Bottom Line:
Never before have so few spent so much to accomplish so little with advertising

Issue: Fox experiments with shorter ad blocks
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

For a decade or more, advertisers and networks both have been bemoaning the loss of audience for advertising.  Part of the culprit was a drop in the overall prime-time television audience, which declined by a third or more in less than ten years (even as the overall U.S. population climbed).  To listen to the networks, however, we would think that digital video recorders and ad-skipping consumers were solely to blame.

Fox has just proven that this was never the case with an interesting experiment on the new prime-time drama, Fringe.   The show debuted with fewer ads in shorter blocks (Fox, of course, charged more per ad).  The result, according to AdAge:

Brand recall of ads that appeared during the first episode of “Fringe” was 32% higher than that of commercials appearing in traditional broadcast-TV programs, according to Nielsen IAG. The level of “program engagement,” or audience attentiveness, for “Fringe” was the second highest among debut episodes on broadcast TV in the past year (only NBC’s “Chuck” did better, IAG said).

We like this strategy for two reasons.  First, it re-contents television which for many years has been incrementally adding more commercials per hour (advertisements in the 1960’s ran for just 8 minutes in an hour - last year it was 18 minutes for the same hour).

Equally important in our view is execution.  Fox wisely inserted time markers before the newly shortened ad blocs.  “Fringe will return in 60 seconds” was a very effective inducement to keep viewers stuck in place, hands off the remotes.  Without these prompts, we doubt that the new strategy would have functioned as well.  They set expectations for consumers and allowed viewers to make rational decisions, which benefited the Fringe advertisers more than on similar shows.

Advertisers and networks need to continue to take responsibility for the sad state of broadcast advertising.  Showing more and more bad advertising just won’t work.  Thanks to Fox for taking a step in the right direction.

Brand: Meetup.com
Execution: Online Video + Viral e-mail
Target: The over-connected
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
The online site for personal meetings, Meetup.com has launched a new campaign aimed at getting the ’screen-addicted’ to leave the confines of their offices and meet other people in person.  The campaign features a claymation video in the style of  Wallace & Gromit.  It shows a lonely man obsessively updating his Facebook status (Q: What are you doing now? A: Updating my status) and IM’ing friends.  Then he sees the Meetup logo (which looks like a fill-in-the-blank event attendee sticker with the meetup name inside it).  He’s bedazzled and, sensing something behind the logo, stands on his chair and pries open his monitor.  There’s a long, dark tunnel behind it, which he crawls through resolutely.  Then he emerges (from his cave, we must assume) into the sunlight and fresh air, discovering a world of other people.

The viral campaign features a customizable “Intervention e-mail” that can be sent to a friend warning them of the dire consequences of their screen addiction in a sort of Madlibs fashion.

What Works:
This clever campaign comes to us from the low-profile but highly influential Meetup.com.  Meetup first gained attention in 2003 when the political campaign of Howard Dean used it to organize grassroot events through the Internet with great success (until his implosion in Iowa).  Meetup has continued to expand as a way for hockey-moms or photo enthusiasts or beagle lovers to meet each other in person, coordinating over the Internet.This advertising blog admires three things in this campaign:

1. Simplicity - Define the problem, illustrate the problem and solve the problem.  There is an elegant simplicity to both the concept and execution of this campaign.
2. Storytelling - As we frequently note, advertising works only when it offers immediate value to the user.  This viral video does so with an engaging story, told in a novel format for an ad.
3. Stickiness - Chip and Dan Heath might like this campaign because it offers a simple and engaging way to share the video.  The multiple choice e-mail is not a new tactic, but this is an amusing execution.

What Doesn’t:
The strength of the Meetup logo and website is also its weekness.  It is a clever pun on the anonymity that social encounters sometimes engender.  Meetup counters this by linking people through their passions, building communities of interest rather than necessity.  Sometime, though an execution of a meta-theme like this can be too clever by half.  While the campaign is excellent, the Meetup.com website seems too generic and perhaps not compelling enough on the home page.

Brand: True Blood (HBO)
Execution: Viral
Target: The Vampire Obsessed
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
To promote the new series “True Blood,” HBO drafted the agency Campfire to create an elaborate insider campaign.  Campfire sent 1,000 elaborate direct mailer pieces in May to vampire bloggers and “science fiction geeks” ( a good description of the program is on AdAge).  The mailer featured a message in an invented ancient language.  A few of the addressees had the necessary language or cryptography skills to translate the language (no Rosetta Stone needed, apparently) and it led them to a website, www.bloodcopy.com.  The website featured a gatekeeper (an actress) who would grant access only to those deemed “true vampires” after video chats.  She was instructed to be difficult to crack into, not easy.

What Works:
Brands often think that their task is to make it easy for everyone to find them.  For years Coca-Cola focused on the slogan “within an arm’s reach of desire” - the idea being to make Coke so easy to find that it was ubiquitous.  With the brand equity and resources of Coca-Cola, this might not be a bad idea, but it fails for many other brands.  HBO and Campfire take the opposite tack, one which resonates much more deeply with human nature: make it really, really tough to get inside and they will come.  They have harnessed the power of exclusivity.

What is brilliant about this campaign is that it is so focused, so precise and not at all interested in making sure that 99% of the target audience gets the message directly from the brand.  It offers a real challenge and doesn’t shrink from sustaining that challenge once the interested have found the brand (on the website).  There is real attention to detail in this campaign that gives it authenticity.

The results have been impressive - lots of youtube activity, press coverage and huge anticipation for the series.

What Doesn’t:
Was it J. Walter Thompson who said “Great advertising can kill a brand”?  The series really needs to live up to the promotion or HBO might find the well is dry the next time around.

Branding Bottom Line:
Campfire spins a tale that makes HBO go bump in the night.