5 Brands Using INFOGRAPHICS Well

One of the best ways to get an audience engaged and familiarized with your brand is through storytelling. Combine this with something visually appealing and you have the recipe for marketing gold.

Infographics are a great way of engaging and familiarizing a potentially huge audience with your brand. Here are just some of the best examples of businesses using infographics, and what you can take from them. 

1.) VERY - THE OFFICE CATWALK

This infographic from clothing brand Very is a great example of a brand who have kept their target audience clearly in mind throughout the creative process. In this case, it’s professional, young women. From the pink & white colour scheme right through to the statistics and market research, Very have created something that is both attractive, informative and appealing to their main demographic. Click here to see infographic

2.) VERACODE - RECIPE FOR A SUCCESSFUL RISK ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

Another great example of a brand with their target audience well in mind, Veracode got a bit creative with this infographic. In a play on the well used cooking guides, the risk assessment company came up with these ‘cooking tips for crafting a super-powered risk assessment program’. The various steps are paralleled by dinner party prep steps and the result is both engaging and informative. Click here to see infographic

3.) SAMSUNG - THE EVOLUTION OF SAMSUNG

In celebration of the launch of their Galaxy 4, Samsung released this infographic illustrating the brand’s growth from humble grocery beginnings to technology tyrants.  Founded in Korea in 1938, the chart documents some of the key points in their 75 years, leading right up to the release of their latest device.  Click here to see infographic

4.) HSBC - EMPLOYEE LIFETIME VALUE

British bank HSBC created this chart to help businesses calculate their Employee Lifetime Value (ELV). With a clear flow chart depicting the different steps you need to undertake, this is a great use of an infographic to help a specific demographic familiarise themselves with a new process as well as steps you need to then follow up on. Click here to see infographic

5.) ZENO MARKETING - 7 STEPS TO BUILDING A STRONG BRAND

Marketing department Zeno took a more literal approach when creating their ‘7 Steps to Building a Strong Brand’ infographic, which depicts the seven building blocks needed to...well, build a strong brand. It’s a more straight-forward approach but with creative patterns and bold text, is the all the more eye-catching. Click here to see infographic

Madeleine Hammond is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, one of the UK’s leading Video Production Companies. 

Brand Update : Thru a horrible campaign,Old Spice asks you to be Mantastic

In my marketing communications class, I used to show the globally famous " The man, your man could smell like" campaign featuring the Old Spice man Isaiah Mustafa ( watch here) as an example of a highly successful marketing campaign in 2010. Three years after, in 2013, P&G started showing that advertisement in the Indian market. The disconnect had started.

To my surprise, the brand owner decided to adapt the globally successful campaign to Indian market with Milind Soman taking the place of Isaiah Mustafa. And the outcome was hopeless.

Watch the ad here : Old Spice India ad 1
                               Old Spice India ad 2

I would say that Old Spice has done a horrible job in adapting a global campaign. I am not sure what the agency had in mind when they conceived this campaign ? While the original global ad had a strategy behind it, the Indian brand failed miserably in making any sense and  succeeded killing the brand's whatever image that is left in the Indian consumer's mind. 

There is total confusion in what the brand is aiming to convey and to whom ? While the Old Spice man from original campaign talked to the ladies with his famous " Hello Ladies " opening, the Old Spice Indian man doesn't know what he is talking about and to whom ?  And sadly at the end of it, the brand talks about " attraction " thus falling into the  same language that other brands are talking about. 

When a brand adapts a globally successful campaign, its inevitable that people will compare and its brand and agencies duty to do justice to the original creative. Here in my opinion, the brand fell flat in the adaptation. The ads are neither attractive nor share-able and is desperately trying to be funny which is sad. The new tagline Smell Mantastic is as horrible as the campaign itself. 

 The new campaign had virtually killed the earlier brand image of Old Spice. But instead of creating a new image, this adaptation had put a confused picture of the brand interms of the image. While the 2010 global campaign put Old Spice in a leading position in western market because the ad theme and message connected with the consumer. But thats not the case here. The adapted campaign neither connects nor conveys any message or makes sense. Hope in the subsequent ads, the creatives will do justice to the brand.

What a horrible waste of a good brand !

8 Ways to Connect with Your Audience and Market Your Brand

When the Internet was made available to the public, few businesses and brands could have anticipated the powerful effect it would have on the ability to personally connect with a consumer audience population. Today, brands are able to metaphorically reach into the homes of consumers, evaluate their preferences and actions, and communicate with consumers on a very personal and intimate level. 

This type of communication is personalizing brands and making them more accessible to consumers. If your website is still struggling to connect with audience members, implementing a few of these strategies may help you market your brand.

Take Questions and Provide Answers

Questions and answers are one of the most popular content types for generating a positive brand image and establishing a business as a reputable source of information. Consumers are filled with questions about their favorite brands, products, services, and subjects, and if your brand can effectively answer these questions, you will generate some serious “fan affection.” Allow consumers to post their questions on your website or blog, and answer the questions as directly as possible.

Host a Contest

Hosting a contest for your consumer population is a great way to stay connected with consumers. People love contests, especially contests that offer a valuable prize such as a free giveaway, valuable discount, or high quality information and recognition. By regularly hosting contests on your website, you will improve your brand’s reputation and keep consumers coming back to your website for more opportunities.

Redesign Your Website

Sometimes, redesigning your website is all it takes to connect with your audience and market your brand as a forward-thinking, modern, and relevant entity. Adding a brand new WordPress template to your blog, for example, will show your readers that your site is continually changing and updating. Implementing new design features on your website will ensure that the site doesn’t become visually stale, too.

Create a Popular Blog

Creating a popular blog is a highly effective way to connect with your target audience. Consumers love blogs because they are simple and accessible sources for high quality information. Be sure that the content on your blog reflects the industry in which you want to make an impact. If you’re trying to sell men’s clothing, for example, a recipe blog isn’t going to allow you to cover much ground with your target audience population. The more you update your blog with relevant information, the more effective your brand marketing efforts will be.

Interact with Consumers via Social Media

Don’t neglect the affordable power of social media when attempting to connect with consumers and market your brand. Most social media networks offer free marketing efforts that simply require the investment of time and energy. You can attract consumers to your social media pages and use links and feature posts to direct them to your website.

Share Images and Video Content

Highly shareable content, like images or video content, are great ways to attract consumer attention and communicate something of value about your brand. You can use infographics, entertaining videos, product promotion videos, or other types of visual content to ensure that your brand remains relevant.

Create a Content Series

Anticipation is a great influencer amongst consumers. If you can create a highly anticipated content series that features “episodes” of content released at regular intervals, you’ll be able to attract incredible amounts of customer attention. Your target audience members will continually check back with your website to see when the next content installment is due to appear.

Treat Your Audience Like People

One of the biggest marketing mistakes that big-name brands make today is treating their consumer population like a massive group rather than a collection of individuals. This problem is increasing because of the massive number of ways that the Internet offers to connect with consumers. Because brands are able to create e-mail blasts delivered directly to consumer inboxes, advertising campaigns that are displayed on computers around the world, and even social media marketing campaigns that reach impressive volumes, it can be difficult to remember that consumers are individuals with individual needs, desires, preferences, and styles. 

Treating your audience members like people is a great way to connect with your audience as a whole and market your brand as something different than your run-of-the-mill business or organization. A brand that communicates directly with its consumers is refreshing and appreciated.

These are just a few of the many strategies that your brand can use to effectively connect with audience members and expand your brand’s reach while simultaneously improving your brand’s image. The Internet offers a myriad of opportunities, and all that is required of you is an investment of time and energy. The results of connecting personally with your audience members will be staggering for your brand’s popularity and reputation, so try implementing one of these great strategies today.

About author

Anny Solway is a dedicated writer at ThemeFuse – a web studio that creates original WordPress themes that can be used out of the box. She loves to share blogging and technology  tips.

Nivea Men : It starts with you

Brand : Nivea Men
Company : Beiersdorf

Brand Analysis : 535

Nivea is on a high these days. One of the world's largest skincare brand has decided to up the ante in the highly cluttered Indian market. In the process, the company has rebranded and repositioned its offering for men. 

Nivea had its presence in the men's grooming market with the brand 'Nivea for men' in 2007. The men's range was promoted with the tagline " What men want ". The brand started its serious foray into men's category with an Advanced Whitening range.

This year, the brand has gone for a makeover. Nivea had rebranded its men's range with the new brand name " Nivea Men". Along with the new name is the new positioning. The Nivea Men is positioned on the user .The typical brand user is  profiled as the one who tackles things on their own. The brand has the new tagline " It starts with you ".

Besides the new name and the positioning, Nivea Men has roped in the Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal as the brand ambassador. The brand is on a high decibel campaign featuring the brand ambassador. 

Watch the ad here : Nivea Men deo , Nivea Men Skin care

I like this campaign for two reasons. First is that the brand has resisted itself from taking the " Attraction " route taken my most men's grooming brand. Second is the fit that the brand established between the brand and its celebrity endorser. I feel that Arjun Rampal was used very smartly by the brand . There is a personal touch and authenticity to the message delivered by the celebrity. 

Nivea has been able to convey its message very smartly in the new campaigns. This has been backed by research done by the brand before venturing into the men's category. According to various newsreports, research revealed that 

a. Men are not satisfied with the efficacy of the existing skincare products which are targeting women.

b. Men are also not interested in visiting products displayed in the women's isles in the stores.

c. While grooming is the end result for women, men view grooming as a tool to get what they want in life.

d.84% of men use products borrowed from the women of their life. 

e. Most of the men's grooming issues arise out of excessive oily skin and hyper-pigmentation.

Based on these insights, the brand carefully crafted  the brand's strategy. It adopted a narrative where the brand talked to the men like men do. This is evident from the way the celebrity endorser has conveyed the message through the ads . 

Another good thing the brand did was it clearly and rationally identified the brand's USPs. For example, in the skincare range, the brand talked about darkspots, for deodorant the brand talked about freshness etc.

Nivea has clearly got its communication right this time. It has a convincing message and a right brand ambassador. Nivea is also the only brand in the men's category to have a range of products ranging from skincare to deos which also adds more punch to the brand's visibility in the retail outlets aswellas the scope. 

Good going.

Reputation Management Using Social Media Accounts

Not too long ago, I started doing reputation management for a company that offers a beauty product. The product has been on the market a long time but recently updated to improve its efficacy and value.  Unfortunately the original business owners had never focused on reputation management for their company or this specific product, and the new owners inherited a reputation mess.

After a complete review of the website, page one and two search results, we put together a plan to leverage existing digital assets and build new ones that would serve as an effective way to enhance page one search results.  Primary social assets such as the Scalp Med Facebook Page, Scalp Med Linkedin Account, Twitter, etc. were all optimized for better search engine presence.  This involved reviewing each account, completing profile information, and embedding target keywords.

The second part of the strategy is leveraging citations.  Not a lot of people are familiar with the term but essentially, in addition to focusing on national search, we focused on Local Search.  Google is placing much more emphasis on business listings and local related factors that help verify business information and authority.

By combining both the optimization of existing social media assets as well as citations, we have been able to positively influence page one search results for the client.  However, some negative listings still persist.  In addition to the before-mentioned strategies, we also reached out to select affiliates who have authoritative websites and could rank assets rather quickly that are in support of the brand. This third prong of the strategy is proving effective as they have been able to influence rankings quickly with a positive result.

Some of you may be asking, "What's next?"  If you've created a reputation marketing plan and are now in a better position but still not showing a pristine online reputation, where do you go from here?  And the answer is that you remain persistent and continue to reinforce the assets that are appearing on page one and page two.  Slow and steady wins the race.  By focusing your efforts on a few, very authoritative assets, you can win in the long run, which should be your goal.

If you simple focus on trying to win the reputation game overnight, you'll have a really difficult time improving your online company view.  I like to use the phrase, "pick your square" which means that you need to focus on the digital assets that give you the best chance of showing up organically and pushing down negative results.

Reputation management and improving online search results for assets that reside on other pages (like your Facebook profile) can take time.  Be patient, continue to optimize, build quality inbound links, and you're sure to win!

Brand Update : Cadbury rebrands Eclairs to Choclairs

Brand : Cholairs

Company : Cadbury India 

Brand Analysis : # 534

In an interesting move, Cadbury's has rebranded its eclair brand to Choclairs. The brand is now running a TVC communicating this rebranding. Cadbury have two brands in the Eclairs segment - Cadbury Dairy Milk Eclairs and Cadbury Eclairs Rich. 

According to Business Standard, echlair market in India is worth around Rs 1000 crore( 2011statistics) and is witnessing intense competition for share between the players like Nestle, Parle, Cadbury and Perfetti. It is estimated that Cadbury is leading the market with its CDM Eclairs.

What can be the possible logic behind the rebranding of a very well known brand ?

One reason can be to handle the issue of generic nature of the term Eclairs. As I understand, eclairs stands for the special type of candy and is used by all the players in  the market. So when a consumer ask for an eclairs, it is retailer that decides which brand to be given. So by changing the name of CDM Eclairs to Choclairs, Cadbury's expect that problem to subside and with the new TVC the brand is trying to teach the consumer to tell the new name Choclairs.

Watch the TVC here : Candbury Choclairs

Second reason can be to remove the endorsement of Dairy Milk from this category. In my earlier posts on this brand, it may be recalled that Cadbury's had earlier renamed its eclair to Cadbury's Dairy Milk Eclairs .In effect, the eclair was a Product line extension of Dairy Milk brand. Now the brand owners may want to restrict the use of Dairy Milk to the chocolate bar category. So since the endorsement is removed, the eclairs would need an identity and Choclairs has become a new independent brand. 

Third reason can be that Choclairs is the brand which is owned by Cadbury's and is a leading brand in UK and China. Choclairs was created in 1996. So this move can be seen as a global alignment of the brands by Cadbury.

The positioning of Choclairs in India is funny. The new brand's main message is that it will not stick on the teeth. The brand has  the tagline " jo dimag mein chipke, daaton mein nahi "  which translates to " It will stick to your mind and not on teeth ". I wonder why the brand has taken such an attribute in a rebranding exercise. 

It is true that eclairs have a tendency to stick to gum and teeth and may be the brand feels that it may be prompting many consumers away from the category. But as a tagline, I feel that the brand deserves a better treatment.

Related post

Eclairs : Brand Update

Successful Affiliate Marketers' Best Tips And Tricks

Has someone ever told you to go into a place of business and tell them that they sent you? Well, if you have, you are already familiar with affiliate marketing. Though word of mouth is important, there are other web marketing campaigns that you can use to help your business and this article provides you with the tips you need to make it happen.

If your program is proving to be profitable, you should not hesitate to inquire about making more money for the work that you do. If you have made yourself valuable to the program through the amount of sales you are generating, they will want to do anything in their power to keep you.

An efficient blog or website is going to create far more affiliate traffic than almost anything else you can do. Be sure that your site is always streamlined and easy to use. A complicated site stuffed with junk content is going to immediately turn traffic away. So, make sure the site is clean and easy to navigate.

If you try one affiliate program and do not see the results that you were hoping for, do not hesitate to try another. Check into the affiliate program you are using to see if they offer any other products, services or payment structures. Some programs offer flexible plans so do your homework and find the one that fits best.

Even though this is the Internet, remember that the customer is always right. You do not want to lose customers because you are being too solid on your stance against someone you feel is incorrect. People talk and that can result in a serious loss in profits for the business.

Blogs are a great way to make money. If you do it right, internet marketing can really pay off. Blogs are a great way to give details about a company's products. A company may not have room on their website catalog to give you the information you need. Giving first hand usage information can pay off.

Some vendors want you to make use of their tracking software, which are generally scams. Avoid any trouble by using a respected, professional tracking system.

Keep track of your affiliate program results. Successful affiliate sales come from watching what works and what doesn't. Most affiliate programs include some type of tracking function that helps you see which links are working well and which ones need to be tweaked. Vary page positions, see what products sell where, which wording helps links perform better, and use it to plan your future affiliate program strategies.

If you are interested in getting involved in web marketing it is extremely important that you educate yourself on the subject. Search out all the pertinent information that you can find. Learn the basic principles of programming, HTML, data feed manipulation, and creating custom links. The more knowledge that you have, the better off you will be.

We are all familiar with the concept of affiliate marketing, we just may not understand its formulation. Hopefully, this article has provided you with the basics you need to start your affiliate promotion campaign in as formal or informal a manner as you might like. By following the tips from this article, you are helping to ensure the success of your program.