21.7.09

2009 brands failed report

2009 is 50% over, In May alone, 376 companies per day sought protection from creditors in bankruptcy court, according toAacer’s court records.Everyone was affected, from small, family-run outfits to major corporations.

It’s worth noting that when a brand dies, it doesn’t necessarily get buried, the way humans do. Some brands, like Circuit City, are resurrected in a different form. Others, like Saab, go dormant, then reemerge in a new form. Still others find themselves gobbled up by bigger fish.

Sterling trucks

sterling

Sterling Trucks, originally Ford’s heavy truck division, was declared a goner by Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) in March 2009. The brand encompassed a range of heavy trucks and tractors, including snow plows, garbage trucks, landscaping, and other vocational vehicles. With Sterling gone, DTNA will focus its strategy on its other two heavy truck brands, Western Star and Freightliner.

Circuit City

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Circuit City liquidated in 2009, after 50 years of operation. According to the company’s now-defunct investors page, more than 30,000 employees were laid off. Hardware company Systemax purchased the Circuit City brand in May, which it now uses at circuitcity.com, an online version of the old retailer.

Home Depot Expo

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Home Depot’s yupperific counterpart closed its doors in April 2009, shedding 34 stores and 7,000 employees. Home Depot admitted in a statement that Expo hadn’t even performed well during the housing boom. Now home flippers will have to settle for plain old Home Depot, the way they always did.

Max Factor

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Proctor & Gamble announced in June that Max Factor will be pulled from American shelves by early 2010, according to TradingMarkets. The company will put its resources into the Cover Girl brand. Max Factor will continue to be sold abroad, where it continues to be a fast-growing brand.

White Cloud Diapers

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This cheaper alternative to Huggies, Luvs and Pampers, was discontinued in spring 2009. Many mothers grieved the loss of the brand, which was sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.

MSN Encarta

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When Microsoft launched Encarta in 1993, the multimedia encyclopedia was a revolutionary concept. Encarta integrated Funk & Wagnall’s, Collier’s, and the New Merit Scholar’s encyclopedias into its 62,000+ article collection. As of October 31, 2009, Encarta will cease to exist. Wikimedia’s Jimmy Wales has approached Microsoft about picking up some of Encarta’sinformation for free.

Monson Trucking

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Duluth, MN-based Monson Trucking will be closing its doors on August 31. The family-owned business had been in operation for 94 years before two of its biggest customers declared bankruptcy, forcing Monson out of business, too. The company was run by four generations of the Monson family. (From the Journal of Commerce.)

Mac Homepage, Groups

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Apple launched HomePage with iTools in 2001. July 7 marked the date when you could no longer edit or create new pages. iWeb, which publishes websites and blogs, will replace Homepage. .Mac Groups, on the other hand, will be taken offline on July 7. MobileMe members will have access to their archives, but all group HomePages, message boards, group email addresses, and iDisk Groups will be removed.

Pontiac

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Pontiac, creator of the fabled Bonneville and GTO, will be phased out forever in 2010. GM announced the sad news on April 27, 2009, burying Pontiac on a plot in its ever-expanding brand graveyard.

iPhone bluetooth headset

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In April 2009, Apple removed its iPhone Bluetooth Headset from the Apple Store for undisclosed reasons. The Apple Insider speculates that the company will either release an improved,iPhone 3.0-compatible version sometime in the future, or it is backing out from the accessory business entirely. Time will tell.

Kodachrome

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Kodak retired Kodachrome one year before the product’s 75th anniversary. 70% of Kodak’s business revolves around digital products, according to a company statement referenced in the LA Times. This leaves no place for Kodachrome, which is nonetheless forever immortalized in the Paul Simon song.

Rocky Mountain News

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The Rocky Mountain News was one of many newspapers whose future was shredded in 2009. Its story represents a universal newspaper story. In February 2009, one of Denver’s two newspapers published its last edition. Owner Scripps Howard News Service said that even if the newspaper went online-only and revenues grew at 40% per year for five years, “they would still be equal to the cost of one newsroom today,” according to a RMN article. The paper was 150 years old. Scripps owned the paper since 1926. It lost $16 million in 2008 alone.

Hummer

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Chengdu’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company scooped up GM’s Hummer brand for less than $500 million (estimated) this June, according to the New York Times. The Chinese company plans to sell more fuel-efficient versions of the trucks, says the Times.

Goody’s

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Tennessee-based Goody’s closed 287 stores in April 2009, The company had managed to reorganize after filing for bankruptcy last June, closing underperforming stores, cutting operating costs, and terminating its e-commerce business. But a poor holiday season and slow retail environment killed the company, which had been around since 1950.

Factor 5

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22-year-old video game developer Factor 5 shuttered after Brash Entertainment, its main customer, closed its doors in spring 2009. Factor 5 was behind the Commodore 64’s Turrican, if you can remember that far back. Other games include Lair for PS3, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron I/II/III for Nintendo 64/GameCube, and a series of Atari, Amiga, GameBoy, and Super Nintendo games.

BearingPoint

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In 2006, BearingPoint was one of Fortune’s “Most Admired” ITservice companies. Just three years later, the company sold off its North American Public Businesses unit to Deloitte and its Global Practices and Commercial Services businesses to PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Predictably,you won’t be seeing the BearingPoint name on the PGA tour anymore, either.

Hard Rock Boulevard

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This is the story of rebranding a street. When Myrtle Beach, SC-based Hard Rock Park, a Hard Rock café-themed park featuring six “rock environs” with names like British Invasion and Lost in the ‘70s, folded in mid-2008, its new owners figured a little rebranding might keep it alive. In mid-2009, the park was reborn as Freestyle Music Park. Unfortunately, the new name did nothing to boost the flopped park’s reputation, reports the Wall Street Journal. Now, the owners want to rename the road it’s located on—Hard Rock Boulevard–as Fantasy Harbour Boulevard. Only time will tell if the new street name removes the music park’s scourge of failure.

Agape World

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Ponzi schemes have brands, too. Agape World, listed as #73 on last year’sEntrepreneur Hot 100 Fastest-Growing Businesses in America, cheated investors out of $380 million through acommercial bridge lending scheme, writes the Wall Street Journal. Founder Nicholas Cosmo now sits in jail on fraud charges, while investors are agape at Entrepreneur for unwittingly promoting a Ponzi scheme.

Gottschalks

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Founded in 1904 as a dry goods store, Gottschalks expanded to become one of the largest department store chains in the country. The store filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January, then starting liquidating at the end of March 2009.

Linux Smartphone

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The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner, the firstLinux smartphone, lasted a mere 10 months before being discontinued. The device was supposed to be the world’s first open-source hardware and software smartphone, according to Heise. Creator Openmoko pulled the phone amidst heavy staff cuts. They are now working on a new device; however, it’s not a smartphone.

I Like My Sprite In You,Sprite Oral Sex Ad Banned In Germany

Sprite has removed the video from Youtube...why? white chick blowing black’s man thingy? Maby??

and this ad reminds me with another evocative ad by Perrier



Credits:

Agency: Langelaan & Cerf

I love my acne...


From South Korea, a website with a nice interface to talk about a topic that is not so nice: acne. Cleocint is an antibiotic used to treat the problem, and as you can easily imagine, it is not an easy product to promote.

cleocint01.jpg

Usually to talk about pimples agencies either come up with something extremely funny (and disgusting) or extremely serious. In Cleocint's case we see a different approach, probably more childish, but surely interesing and definitely not disgusting.

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The interface

Everything is pale yet calm and reassuring. and on the Cleocint website the feeling there is understanding and support to fight it.

cleocint03.jpg

Traffic Light Dance Off.

Streets attacked by Red, Green, Yellow dancers to promote a dance festival.

The festival is Woking Contemporary Dance Festival and the dance is called Traffic Light Dance Off.

Client:http://www.wokingdancefestival.co.uk

Agency:Lethal Design + Branding

Samsung Jet phone

July 17, 2009
Live 'flash' event in the heart of London with a flying spaceship and bungee jumping elephants.


20.7.09

Palm Pre Commercial's


Palm Pre Commercial - "Deja Vu" (HDTV)



Palm Pre Flow Commercial (HDTV)

Palm Pre Flow Commercial 2 (HDTV)

Do you speak social? The rise of social web literacy

Enara::: print ads












































Retrobrands:Everything Old Is New Again

Free Starbucks ice cream for Facebook users

Facebook users can already send each other real flowers, candy and drinks. Now they can add ice cream to that list as well—free, no less—thanks to a new promotion from Starbucks and Unilever.

Beginning this week and extending through July 19, Starbucks and partner Unilever are giving away coupons for more than 800 free pints of the newly launched Starbucks Ice Cream on Facebook every hour. US-based users of the social networking site need only visit the special promotion page on Facebook at the beginning of any hour and be ready to click quickly before that hour's set of coupons is gone. If they succeed in claiming one, they can choose to send it to any friend on or off Facebook, or they can elect instead to treat themselves. Either way, the coupon can then be redeemed for the Starbucks Ice Cream flavour of the recipient's choice: Caramel Macchiato, Mocha Frappuccino, Java Chip Frappuccino or Coffee. There is a limit of one coupon per household; those who fail at first to get one can keep trying, as a total of some 20,000 free coupons will be given away each day before the contest's end.

One part Facebook perk and one part tryvertising, the wisely targeted Starbucks Ice Cream promotion is sure to win many a fan for the new ice cream, particularly since there's almost certainly a significant overlap among devotees of the two brands. Pick the right audience, give away ice cream in July, and it's hard to go wrong! ;-) (Related: Food blogger turned purveyor & intermediary.)

Website: www.starbucksicecream.comapps.facebook.com/starbucksicecream

Spotted by: Brandweek via Raymond Kollau

Package tracking via Twitter

Some 6 million people visit Twitter each month, so it's no wonder applications for the platform are coming fast and furious. Not only can consumers use Twitter to track their favourite taco truck, file civic complaints and apply for jobs, but they can now track their packages as well thanks to a new application from North Carolina-based Signal Engine.

Users with packages to track begin by following PackageTrack on Twitter (@packagetrack), causing the free application to follow them in return. They can then direct message PackageTrack with the nickname of a package they'd like to track along with its tracking number, separated by a colon—"Red Dress: 23345631243," for example. PackageTrack then notifies them by Twitter each time the package's status changes, including a Google Map illustrating its route. Launched earlier this year, PackageTrack currently tracks only UPS, USPS and FedEx packages, but it says it will be adding more carriers soon.

All the world may have once been a stage, but today one might say it's a microblogging platform; no longer merely players, all the men and women now tweet and follow. What is *your* brand doing to reach customers on Twitter...?

Website: www.packagetrackapp.com
Contact:
contact@signalengine.com

Sadia

Sadia


According to its website, Sadia, which is Portuguese for “healthy,” is the largest poultry producer in Brazil and one of the world’s leading producers of chilled and frozen foods.
Its product offerings range from chicken breasts to prepared products such as chicken nuggets, cordon bleu or coated/flavored chicken fillets and frozen ready meals, and it uses 2.5 million tons of chicken, turkey, pork and beef protein-based products.

The brand was founded more than 60 years ago in southern Brazil, and since then Sadia has established distribution points in more than 100 countries across the world, particularly in the Middle East, Europe and Russia, but also in the Caucasus, Asia, the Americas and Africa.

Before the current economic crisis, the American stock projection website The Motley Fool declared Brazilian food processing and distributing brand Sadia a hot stock pick, giving it a five-star CAPS rating. But on May 19, 2009, it was announced that Sadia would be gobbled up by larger processed food company Perdigão, after the smaller rival posted the first annual loss in its 65-year history because of wrong-way bets on the Brazilian currency.

Founded in 1934 by Italian immigrants, Perdigão is one of the largest food companies in Latin America, employing more than 55,000 people. It ranks third in poultry slaughtering and ranks among the ten largest hog slaughtering companies in the world. It is also one of the leading Brazilian companies in milk collection. A brand with a considerable worldwide reach, its products are sold to more than 110 countries, and it acts as an umbrella to sub-brands such as Batavo, Elegê, Perdix, Chester and Cotochés.

We paid a visit to Sadia.com to see where the brand stands in comparison to Perdigão online.

To support its global presence, Sadia.com can be viewed in four languages: Portuguese, English, German and Russian. But from a branding standpoint, the look, feel and messaging leave much to be desired. Dry, static and looking like it hasn’t been updated since 1996, Sadia.com is sorely lacking in brand establishment, value-added content and innovation. It seems as if it was constructed with the sole purpose to serve as a receptacle for rudimentary brand information like corporate information and quality assurance, investor relations and brief product descriptions—not to provide consumers with an inviting brand experience.

But a visit to and study of Perdigão’s website portends that renovations may be in store for the Sadia online presence. Perdigão launched its global brand, Perdix, in 2001 because, according to that website, “Perdix was developed to have an easy to pronounce brand name as well as keeping all the qualities by which Perdigão is already known all over the world. In this way, it has the same prefix as Perdigão, resulting in an easy association, transmitting the values of the well-known brand to Perdix. And the suffix ‘x’ brings to mind modernity and technology. Therefore, Perdix products combine the tradition of preparing delicious food and always innovating for over 70 years, with high quality international standards.”

SadiaAt the least, this demonstrates consideration for the user experience, and the website for Perdix follows suit. The site appears current, its look and feel maintains continuity and its animated visuals present their products in a moderately appetizing manner—all features that Sadia.com is lacking, but may not be for long.

Also, visitors are invited to interact with the brand through streaming TV ads and a collection of easily searchable recipes for Perdix products. It probably would benefit the brand to delve deeper into the consumer realm, creating a community to tap into consumer feedback. But Perdix-International.com serves its corporate function well by providing comprehensive investor information such as mission statements, sustainability, accountability—even streaming stock info and an earnings update via webcast.

From a branding standpoint, Sadia’s online presence is in sore need of a revamp, and Perdix is a good fit to bring it into the 21st century. And not a moment too soon.

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