29.4.09

Avid::: new logo

website: http://www.avid.com/
At the center of Avid’s brand identity is a new logo composed of simple geometric shapes derived from the buttons, icons and markers that consumers and professionals recognize as fundamental to the digital audio and video solutions they use every day to enable their creativity.
The new logo forms a visual connection to iconic shapes that represent “volume up, volume down, play, pause, record and forward,” signaling a unification of the company’s core audio and video offerings. The distinctive mark also spells out the company’s name in abstract letterforms.
"Avid is coming together as one company with new offerings, a new strategy, and a new operating model. We are stronger as one company than we are as separate parts, and we have a unique opportunity to help our customers achieve greater success in a digital world," said Gary Greenfield, Chairman and CEO of Avid. "Our new identity is one of the powerful ways we are communicating the evolution of our business as well as our commitment to partner with customers by understanding exactly what they want to do. Whether it's the flawless execution of a global television broadcast, a chart-topping hit song, a lean-forward moment on the big screen or in a sold out concert venue, or a home movie that family members will cherish for a lifetime, our customers want integrated, interoperable, and open audio and video offerings. By pulling together all of our category-creating technologies under one roof, we are beginning to serve our customers with digital media solutions unlike any other company in the world."

The old logo was memorable with its italic quirkiness but the new one is both memorable and relevant. At first glance it might feel like a cliche to use the play buttons as a logo, but as truly universal icons for a range of products that are accepted industry-wide, it’s the perfect use. The result is simple and bold. I could definitely do without the shading, specially being so subtle it feels unnecessary. But this will surely look great on screen and some glossy packaging. I also like the idea of filling in the shapes with images and, while it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, Avid pulls it off nicely.

28.4.09

Dominos Pizza :::Remote-controlled pizza

BRAND OWNER :Dominos Pizza CATEGORY :Food
REGION :USA
DATE :Nov 2008 - Dec 2007
MEDIACHANNEL:TiVo

Domino’s Pizza wanted to find a way to make it even more convenient for people to get their pizza fix.

Recognizing that most people require pizza when lazing around at home watching TV, Domino’s wanted to create a customer interaction via their TV. The brand wanted a mechanism that would mean that the customer did not need to get up off their couch to order food.
Once off the couch, there is the risk that a consumer will find a competing take away menu while looking for the Domino’s flier or deciding to eat something in their own fridge.
Domino’s teamed up with PVR service TiVo to allow customers with broadband to order a pizza via their television set. When a customer was fast forwarding through a commercial for Domino’s, TiVo flashed a pop-up ad asking if the customer would like to order a pizza and then direct them to an ordering screen.
Customers were able to select their crust, toppings, and sauces from an ordering screen. And pizzas show up at the customer's door in about 30 minutes, for the same price as what is offered locally. They could even see a timer on their screen showing how much time was left until delivery.
This is the first time TiVo has set up a partnership with a restaurant company to sell food through the television.

Doritos Seriously

"A concept to cover the full range of Doritos products and promotion. Based on the distinctive triangular corn chips in the form of warning signs, the design highlights the bold and intense flavours of Doritos















Silver Hills Bakery:::Before and After


Brand:Silver Hills Bakery
Country: Canada


The new creative concept was prompted by an insight discovered during brand strategy development that the bakery’s “Squirrelly” bread had higher brand recognition and recall than the Silver Hills’ parent brand.

Karacters Design Group’s brand identity experts used this insight as an interesting naming strategy for the other breads and counseled Silver Hills to rename them with the following unusual, unique names: Squirrelly, The Kings Kamut, Hemptation, The Big 16, Little Big Bread, Hardy Hearty Harvest, Mack’s Flax, Marvelous Multi, Radiant Raisin and Steady Eddie.
The re-branded packaging has a distinct shelf presence that beckons to be picked up and examined. Using solid, matte colours, which are unusual for the category, the colourful, biodegradable bags include witty illustrations by Robert Hanson. The lighthearted illustrations evoke the new names visually and cleverly incorporate captivating bread windows to display the product.
“The sliced bread category is very dull and one dimensional with most brands sharing the same visual wheat sheaf-cues, functional descriptors and clichéd good-for-you health claims.

Our goal was to develop new packaging that would break through the homogeneity and connect with consumers in a humanistic way,” says James Bateman, creative director, Karacters Design Group. “The witty illustrations and unique names engage customers on an emotional level that makes you want to smile, while the short stories reveal the authenticity and integrity behind each carefully crafted loaf.”

How to measure visitor engagement

Part 1: session-based indices

Click-Depth Index (Ci)
is the percent of sessions having more than “n” page views divided by all sessions.
Recency Index (Ri)
is the percent of sessions having more than “n” page views that occurred in the past “n” weeks divided by all sessions. The Recency Index captures recent sessions that were also deep enough to be measured in the Click-Depth Index.
Duration Index (Di)
is the percent of sessions longer than “n” minutes divided by all sessions.
Brand Index (Bi)
is the percent of sessions that either begin directly (i.e., have no referring URL) or are initiated by an external search for a “branded” term divided by all sessions (see additional explanation below)
Feedback Index (Fi)
is the percent of sessions where the visitor gave direct feedback via a Voice of Customer technology like ForeSee Results or OpinionLab divided by all sessions (see additional explanation below)
Interaction Index (Ii)
is the percent of sessions where the visitor completed one of any specific, tracked events divided by all sessions (see additional explanation below)
Part 2: binary weighting factors based on visitor behavior

Loyalty Index (Li)
is scored as “1″ if the visitor has come to the site more than “n” times during the time-frame under examination (and otherwise scored “0″)
Subscription Index (Si)
is scored as “1″ if the visitor is a known content subscriber (i.e., subscribed to my blog) during the time-frame under examination (and otherwise scored “0″)
You take the value of each of the component indices, sum them, and then divide by “8″ (the total number of indices) to get a very clean value between “0″ and “1″ that is easily converted to a percentage.
Given sufficient robust technology, you can then segment against the calculated value, build super-useful KPIs like “percent highly-engaged visitors” and add the engagement metric to the reports you’re already running.
Engagement: is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly defined set of goals.
"engagement = attention * emotion"

In-N-Out Burger: Professionalizing Fast-Food

How do you build a word-of-mouth following for your product or service? That's one challenge most companies would love to wrestle with, but few do.
California's fast-food chain In-N-Out Burger is an exception, with a famously devoted customer base that inspires envy throughout the industry—and brand recognition well beyond its geographic reach. But instead of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into ad campaigns like rivals Burger King (BKC) and McDonald's (MCD), In-N-Out relies mainly on its carefully located stores, billboards, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and its own rabid fans to broadcast its message.
In this excerpt from her new book, In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules BusinessWeek writer Stacy Perman shows how the chain's marketing strategy works.

This excerpt tracks how Rich Snyder, son of founders Esther and Harry Snyder, expanded the chain, focusing closely on the quality of the food—and the staff—before he was killed in a plane crash in 1993.
Rich Snyder was 24 when he became president of In-N-Out Burger after his father, Harry, died in 1976. He shared Harry's belief that running a successful fast-food business wasn't about cutting corners or using the right equipment. What it boiled down to was the people on the front lines.
Where the two differed, however, was that Harry had hoped his "associates," as he and Esther insisted on calling employees, would work hard, save money, and leave. Rich had another idea: "Why let good people move on when you can use them to help your company grow?" Rich also wanted to establish a much bigger footprint for In-N-Out Burger.
There was another difference between father and son: Rich was a born-again Christian. In the 1980s he began printing biblical references on cups and burger wrappers, and then he went further, commissioning a Christmastime radio commercial that asked listeners to let Jesus into their lives, alongside In-N-Out's jingle. Many stations refused to run the ads, and Californians showered the company with complaints. Rich essentially shrugged off the reaction. The Bible chapter-and-verse references remain to this day, and radio ads commingled with evangelism still crop up.
But on issues of quality, Rich remained his father's son. In 1984, in Baldwin Park, Calif., he set up In-N-Out University, a training facility, with the aim of filling the pipeline with qualified managers and reinforcing the company's focus on quality, cleanliness, and service. About 80% of In-N-Out's store managers started at the very bottom, picking up trash before rising through the ranks. Rich realized that if he wanted to expand, he needed to put a system in place that would professionalize management.
To attend In-N-Out University, an associate usually had to have worked full-time at a store for a year. In that time, she had to demonstrate initiative, strong decision-making ability, and impressive people skills. A cornerstone of In-N-Out's limited growth strategy was to expand only as quickly as the management roster would allow. At the university Rich came up with a number of ideas to hone the training process. For instance, a team of field specialists was deployed to motivate and instruct associates. Inspired by pro sports teams, Rich began producing a series of training films and videotaped trainees to critique their performance.
Although the work could be dreary—imagine a four-hour shift spent cleaning up spilled milk shakes—associates were made to feel part of an important enterprise and given opportunities to advance. On-the-job training was wedged in between mealtime rushes, and everyone was given large helpings of feedback. Rich wanted each associate to understand his job and how he could do it better. The result was that many part-timers came for a summer job and stayed for a career.



Despite some flickers of media attention since its founding in 1948, nothing gave press-shy In-N-Out more publicity than its own longtime customers. Staying simple and remaining focused on its core values had allowed In-N-Out to stay true to its loyal fan base. And it was precisely those customers who often did the heavy lifting, frequently boasting about their zealous affection for the chain to everybody else. Regulars engaged in an ongoing contest, trying to outdo each other on how many hamburgers they could eat at any one time. Some regulars also assumed the responsibility of bringing in a constant stream of new devotees, an act generally referred to as "the conversion."

INFURIATING ADVICE
Rich thought of his job as the point at the bottom of an inverted triangle. He was there to support everyone in the company. When talking to store managers, he was always careful to refer to the shops as "your stores," hoping this would help instill a sense of ownership.
At one point when Rich was planning the expansion drive, he sought the advice of a food industry consultant. The expert told Rich that if he slashed salaries, In-N-Out could save a "ton of money." This infuriated Rich. Recounting the story, he said it was exactly the kind of advice one would expect "from a guy who wears a suit and who thinks you don't pay a guy who cooks hamburgers that much money."
From its start, In-N-Out paid employees more than the going rate. (Associates always made at least $2 to $3 above minimum wage.) As of February 2008, In-N-Out was paying new part-time associates $10 an hour—just 51 cents less than full-time workers at Wal-Mart (
WMT), whose $375 billion in annual sales is about 1,000 times greater than In-N-Out's. Store managers at In-N-Out make at least $100,000 a year and are eligible for monthly bonuses tied to store sales.
Rich also established an expansive set of benefits, including 401(k) plans, paid vacation for part-timers, and health, dental, and vision plans for full-time workers. Each year, he put on companywide picnics and a gala dinner. Managers who met their goals were sent on trips with their spouses, often to Europe in first-class seats. For a Christmas outing to a performance of The Nutcracker, Rich insisted that his managers wear tuxedos. He thought they stood shoulder to shoulder with any blue-chip manager and wanted them to feel that way, too.
The upshot of treating its employees with special care is that In-N-Out boasts one of the lowest turnover rates in the business. Industrywide, only about half of all fast-food workers stay beyond a year. And the numbers plummet to just 25% at two years and 12% at three. In In-N-Out's case, managers' typical tenure is 14 years, while part-time associates remain, on average, for two.
To this day, the corporate culture inspired by Harry and Esther and carved in stone by Rich stands in stark contrast to rivals' systems of low-paid burger flippers and cashiers who don their disposable hats for what society has deemed McJobs. And it never drove up prices or pushed down quality.

A Double-Double, Twice
At the same time, without corporate solicitation, a roster of celebrity names regularly endorsed the chain. "When I first joined the band, we must have eaten there at least three days a week," recalled rocker Sammy Hagar, who signed up as the front man for Van Halen in 1985. "We were in the studio recording 5150, and we'd send someone to go get food, and we'd talk about sushi or pizza and always end up with In-N-Out." Gordon Ramsay, the British celebrity chef with 12 Michelin stars, global fame, and profanity-laced rants, once admitted to sitting down for a Double-Double and then "minutes later I drove back 'round and got the same thing again to take away." PGA golf champ Phil Mickelson mentioned the chain so often that whenever he fell into a losing streak, sportswriters began suggesting that he cut back on the Double-Doubles.
Before long, tourists got wind of In-N-Out Burger and began making their own pilgrimages to what was considered the quintessential Southern California attraction. Fans passed the "secret menu" on to one another and described the sublime pleasures of tucking into an Animal Style cheeseburger. Vegetarians talked up the chain's off-menu Grilled Cheese. Expatriate Californians pined for their favorite burger, and In-N-Out T-shirts were the epitome of cool. Analysts spoke of In-N-Out's "uncopyable advantage," while everybody else talked about its unparalleled cult following. According to William Martin, who devised the training curriculum for In-N-Out University, the Snyders and the rest of the chain's highest echelon were definitely conscious of the mystique that had developed around In-N-Out. "They were all aware of it, and they loved it," he said. "But they had no explanation for it." That didn't mean, however, that they didn't know how use it.




Website : http://www.in-n-out.com/

Peugeot::: Nude |308 CC

In a cheeky bit of naked ambition, French automaker Peugeot inundated London's morning commuters today with a pool of 308 'nude' actors who appeared to only be wearing scarves. What was the reason for the au natural display? Why, to celebrate the arrival of the company's latest topless model, the 308 Coupe Cabriolet.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the flesh flash mob was actually outfitted in form-fitting body-colored suits, thus preventing the local authorities getting rude with the nudes.

Twitter:http://twitter.com/nudeinascarf/

Orange:::Chabal needs your help

BRAND OWNER:France Telecom
CATEGORY:Telecoms/ Mobile
REGION:France
DATE:Nov 2008 - Dec 2007

Orange wanted to increase the number of customers watching football matches on their mobile phone on Orange TV with the launch of Orange Ligue 1, a service that made the main French football championships available on mobile.
Orange selected French iconic rugby player Sebastien Chabal to star in an interactive campaign. Visitors to a site,
http://www.chabal-le-duel.com/, could sign up their friends or themselves, entering in their name, address and mobile number. The webuser then receives a phone call on his mobile when he is looking at a video of Chabal preparing to kick a football into goal. The voice at the end of the phone is Chabal himself, asking them where to kick the football. They can pick one of several locations on the goal to aim for and must press a corresponding mobile phone key to instruct Chabal to shoot. When he shoots he gets a goal and then Chabal lifts his shirt to reveal the name of the webs user written on his under shirt, saying “This goal is dedicated for X”. At the end, the person is asked whether they are a customer or not and can then apply for the offer from Orange.
In 10 days, with no advertising, Orange had 1 million unique visitors on the web site.

In Saudi Arabia::: NEVER say NO to your customers

http://www.hotsauce.com/

for hot sauce lovers

27.4.09

OVK :::Let it ring

BRAND OWNER:OVK
CATEGORY:Charities
REGION:Belgium
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008


Most people know that using your mobile phone while driving can cause accidents, and a large number of accidents could be avoided if people didn’t answer their mobile phones while driving. A charity for parents of child road victims, OVK, wanted to hammer home the dangers of speaking on your phone while driving in a surprising way.
OVK created a website letitring.be where people could enter their friend’s mobile number and email address. The friend would then receive an email containing a link to a Belgium’s largest video portal Garage TV video and a message saying “check out this crazy car crash I found on the web (be sure to put your sound up loud)”. When the friend clicks on the link, the Garage TV video opens in his browser.
The friend thinks they are about to see a user-generated car crash movie on a video website. The video shows a driver’s view of a car journey, with the camera looking through the windscreen at the road. While the person is watching the video, their phone will start to ring at a crucial moment in the video. As soon as they answer the phone, the car in the video loses control and crashes. Then the message appears on the screen saying: “avoid an accident. Let it ring.” They are then given the option to pass the viral prank on with the website’s details. This was supported by a separate campaign aimed at young people who listen to their MP3 players in traffic. Teaming up with popular musicians Sioen, Joshua and Sound of Stereo they created tracks that could be freely downloaded. They songs start as normal, but halfway through you hear the screeching sounds of car tyres and a crashing sound, followed by the brand message.

7 Skills for a Post-Pandemic Marketer

The impact of Covid-19 has had a significant impact across the board with the marketing and advertising industry in 2020, but there is hope...