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You’re working on a new product and you’re about to make decisions on color. Perhaps for the product itself, perhaps for the logo, perhaps for your website. And you’re going to make your color choice based on… what? Your childhood preferences?

If you’d like to have a little more to back up your decision with than “But I like blue”, then consider that there is a whole school of thought on the meaning of various colors. Tread carefully, because all of this is based in a particular culture, so what works in Wisconsin won’t cut it in Calcutta. And I figure there’s at least some subjectivity tossed in as well. But it’s worth looking into, because if colors carry a cultural meaning, you should be aware of what your color choices say about your product.

With that long intro, let me now point you to a very cool flash movie passed to me today. Check out Color In Motion. Spend a few minutes watching it, it’s slick flash which does a great job of illustrating each of the colors and associated emotions.

Just a suggestion here. If you’re going to go to the trouble of creating an email newsletter, create an html version which is available permanently on your website. You’ve already gone to the trouble of building the content. Why not put in the extra effort to add that content to your web presence and make it available via an archive? Even better, include it in your site search functionality.

Just by way of example, check out this site. I know nothing about the company, I include it because it’s the first site I found in Google which does what I’m talking about. And that’s exactly why it’s a good practice — it increases your Google visibility so that people will find you whenever they happen to search on some phrase that you happened to use way back when.

It’s surprising how few sites do not take advantage of this. I’ve been guilty myself. Maybe it’s because of the typical separation between electronic and physical promotional tools, and we look at ‘newsletters’ as being a print communication media, not having adopted to their now being electronic.

In any case, anything that expands your site content in a way which is relevant to your core message or topic is a good move.

Cadbury Schweppes had to last-minute cancel a promotional treasure hunt for a gold coin… in a Boston cemetery. Apparently someone pointed out that encouraging people to dig for buried treasure in a cemetery might be a little… offensive.

What is it with Boston and these ill-conceived stunts?

Last week an internal memo by Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz leaked to the net. In the memo, he wonders if somewhere along the path of growing from 1,000 to 13,000 stores, the company might have lost its way and commoditized its brand. He cites a number of moves which eacg seem right individually, but viewed together, give him pause:

Many of these decisions were probably right at the time, and on their own merit would not have created the dilution of the experience; but in this case, the sum is much greater and, unfortunately, much more damaging than the individual pieces.

Some of the decisions he questions include:

• installing automatic espresso machines, which allows customers faster service, but moves away from the ‘hand-made’ vibe which Starbucks is known for
• moving away from scooping fresh coffee right in the store in favor of using ‘flavor-locked’ packaging. Faster, more efficient, but it’s no longer apparent the company grinds and roasts its own coffee, and it also reduces the stores’ familiar coffee bean aroma
• Store design moving towards more of a ‘chain’ and less of a ‘neighborhood’ feel

It’s interesting to see how someone at the very top of the food chain ultimately struggles with many of the same issues we at the bottom must deal with daily. The only difference is a few extra zeros on the revenue number, and if I write a memo, it doesn’t wind up on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal.

For me, the takeaway from this memo is: Beware of slow creep. You’ve gone to the trouble to define a brand, and to build a brand image, and your brand concept has been validated by the market. But then one day, you make a compromise out of expediency. A few weeks later you make another. And then another, and so on. At some point, you look back, and you’ve renamed your business McStarbucks.

If you’re interested, I’ve previously made some comments on Starbucks here.

I’m sick as a dog today, not a very happy camper.  I don’t know about you, but I get a whole lot more brand conscious when I’m sick. I don’t want substitutes, I want the real thing. ‘Real’ in this case is whatever I happen to be used to. The other day I had a choice between Cold Eeze and the generic store brand. Logic says that they’re both exactly the same, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I laid out the extra buck or two on the off chance there IS a difference.

And then my wife bought Tylenol cold tablets. The thing is, I grew up using Contact. And right now, when I feel like crap, is NO time to start experimenting with new brands, as far as I’m concerned. I had to drag my sorry butt to the store to get the Contact.

Maybe there is some aspect of being sick where you feel vulerable and allow brands to imprint on you much stronger than usual. Just a thought.

It’s Haiku Friday — time to knock out a haiku on the stated topic from a marketing angle. Please reply with any comments in haiku form….

10 hours in a plane
To New York via New York
50 feet per hour

Bloggers, join a viral effort to build links to your blog.

What do you have to do to join? Merely copy the links below, and put them in a new post, adding the last site you got the Zlist from. And watch as people copy the list from your blog and pass it on.

Ponder Marketing
the 15,000-dollar mission
DoshDosh
612 to apocalypse
JCM´s RPG art
Connected Internet
Blog-Op
Can I Make Big Money Online
Blogtrepreneur
Flee the Cube
Blogging to Fame
Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under
Kumiko’s Cash Quest
Calico Monkey
Internet Bazaar
JCM´s blog
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes!
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
darrenbarefoot.com
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly

I watched some of American Idol earlier tonite (along with most of the rest of America, so I guess I don’t have to be too apologetic). Some modicum of singing talent is needed to get anywhere on the show, but in the end, this is, quite by definition, a popularity contest. It’s interesting to see the different approaches which contestants take towards branding themselves. Round 1 gives them 1.5 minutes to ‘position’ themselves in the minds of an audience of millions. Quite the task for any marketer, never mind a 20 year old who also has to sing on key.

Some of the singers really try to go for the center of the bell curve.  I put in this group every one who’s doing a Justin Timberlake impression, generally creating a weak fascimile of a star who is himself a weak fascimile of a star. Lots of attempts at the r&b singing style, which is great if executed perfectly, but loses points fast if it goes astray.

Then on the other hand, you have the guys who aim to go narrow. For example, this dude. (I wanted to put his picture in, but it seems to be prohibited by Fox’s Terms of Use - great way to be viral, guys!). Anyways, here’s some guy who looks like no one else, and doesn’t really care. My guess is he’s likely to develop a pretty strong cult following. Playing to a niche is not the sort of thing which makes you an American Idol, but it gets you through a few rounds, and also makes for a pretty strong music (or business ) foundation.

Interestingly enough, Seth Godin just did a post on what he terms Micro Hysteria with an argument along these same lines, except better executed than mine. In a nutshell, you can shoot for the moon, and there are long odds you might hit it, but better odds you won’t succeed. On the other hand, you can shoot for a smaller, more focused target, with better odds of not just succeeding, but also ‘owning’ a position with that audience.

So the next logical question is… if your business were a contestant on American Idol, what would its approach be? Are you edgy, or mainstream, or just lame? Are you mimicking your betters in the big leagues, or blazing your own trail? Are you aiming to be Coke, or Dr. Pepper, or Yoo Hoo? It’s always good to know where you stand, so that you’re standing where you want, and you’re not surprised when the judges call you on it.

With all the press coverage of global warming, it was only a matter of time until someone figured out they could cash in on it. Enter Diesel, with a new ad campaign touting a line of clothes which are “Global Warming Ready”. Images include a young chap lounging by the seaside (at Mt. Rushmore) and Rio’s mountaintop Jesus statue submerged up to its knees.

As the Washington Post reports:

In print ads promoting its spring/summer collection, the Italian-based clothing company depicts landscapes that have been transformed by environmental disaster. The proud buildings of Manhattan and the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore are half-submerged in water from melted glaciers. Paris is a steamy jungle. Life looks pretty awesome, though. Diesel’s models are dressed fashionably if barely (to accommodate the weather) and they lounge amid this hip dystopia in glamorous unconcern, fanning themselves or applying suntan lotion to one another’s tawny backs.

You can see the cheeky video which accompanies the campaign right here:

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Imagine the uproar if they put this on during the Super Bowl! Who knows if it will sell clothes, but it would spread their name around. Let’s see how viral the campaign is, watch your newspapers for indignant editorials.

In recent years, blogging has progressed from a means for teenage girls to share their innermost thoughts with the world to a powerful 2-way communication and promotion channel of great utility to astute businesses, politicians, marketers and, yes, still teenagers.

I emphasize the ‘2-way communication’ aspect of it. We expect a certain level of interactivity with our web experience these days. Also with our television viewing (TIVO), our sports-watching (fantasy leagues), and our product-buying (Nike’s build-your-own-sneakers program, Levi’s custom jeans program).

The beauty of the blog concept is that a) it’s easy for anyone to do, and b) when done right, it creates a continually expanding network of knowledge. I post something, someone responds, I answer back, someone on another blog picks up on it and links to my post. Multiply by 10 million posts and you have a continuous string of knowledge and thought which circumvents national and geographic borders.

A marketer should never lose sight of the 5 most important letters in the world: WIIFM– What’s in it for me?  Because really, that’s the driver behind this self-expanding blog network. People go to the trouble of linking and commenting only partly because they want to share their wisdom. The other part of it is self-interest, because through the act of participating in YOUR blog, they build traffic to THEIR blog. What a great system.

But what happens when the chain gets cut? In browsing around, I find increasing numbers of sites which don’t provide backlinks to commenters and trackbackers. In some cases, they may not even allow comments or trackbacks. This strikes me as a gross misunderstanding of what blogging is all about (at best), and a brazen attempt to profit off the community’s efforts without contributing back (at worst).

I suppose everyone has heard (at least in concept) of Metcalfe’s law- the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes or people in the network. If you think about what incentive all those people have to connect with one another, you come down to a) the good of the collective as a whole and b) their own self interest. One thing we know is that people appreciate things done for the good of the collective, but they are rarely willing to put much effort into it themselves, unless the other incentive kicks in - it’s in their own self interest. WIIFM.

So in other words, open up your blog so that you and blog society may prosper. Now go forth and multiply nodes.

And feel free to comment or trackback, you’ll get a link out of it. That’s what is in it for you.