Ad Age

 
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Retailers Make Same Marketing Mistake as Airlines.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 12/2006

November 24th, the day after Thanksgiving, was Black Friday, the shopping orgy organized by America?s retail chains. Opening early, many retailers competed to see which chain could offer the deepest discounts. Newton?s third law states: ?For every action, these is an equal and opposite reaction.? What is the opposite reaction when a chain offers to sell its wares at deep discounts? Unfortunately for retailers, the opposite reaction, as far as consumers are concerned, is that ?your regular prices are too high.? Is that what most retailers want to communicate? I think not.

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Red giants and white dwarfs.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 11/2006

Sony Corporation has just announced the results of its most recent quarter and the numbers are dismal. On revenues of $15.7 billion, net profits after taxes were $14.4 million, or just .09 percent of revenues. (Less than one-tenth of one percent.) Compare General Motors, a company in trouble, with Sony. In the past 10 years, which company has made the most money?

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From famous advertising name to meaningless initials.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 10/2006

J. Walter Thompson has changed its name to JWT and another famous advertising name gets replaced by meaningless initials. The agency now goes into the history books with Doyle Dane Bernbach (changed to DDB) and Foote, Cone & Belding (changed to FCB.) Is nothing sacred? Will Advertising Age change its name to AA? Hopefully not, but you never can tell. Initialitis has infected the world of branding.

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Heineken already had a light beer: Amstel.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 9/2006

Why are so many marketing people enamored with line extension when history shows that line-extension successes are mostly ?illusions.? What categories have had the most line extensions? It?s those categories that are declining in volume. To name three: beer, cigarettes and cola.

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Is it the end of the ultimate advertising slogan?
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 8/2006

One of the most important conceptual ideas in marketing is ?owning a word in the mind.? In almost every market, in almost every category, the leading brands are brands that can be identified by a single word or concept. BMW owns ?driving.? Mercedes-Benz owns ?prestige.? Volvo owns ?safety.?

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One brand for today. One brand for tomorrow.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 7/2006

One of the hidden drivers of business is fashion and I?m not just talking about clothing. Fashion is a big driver in food, in beverages, in automobiles, in furniture and in almost every other consumer goods category. What?s hot today often cools off tomorrow. That?s why we sometimes recommend a multiple-brand strategy. One brand for today, one brand for tomorrow.

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Why Small Marketers Need to Reach for the Stars
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 6/2006

One of the most frequently-asked questions at our seminars and speeches is: ?What special rules do you have for small businesses?? The answer is: There aren?t any.

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Pushing the boundaries of creativity to absurd levels.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 5/2006

Not only do auto advertisers skip from slogan to slogan, they also push the boundaries of creativity to absurd levels. For a number of years now, I've been collecting advertisements that are over the top. In other words, ads that seem to have been created for creativity's sake only.

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The Halo Effect
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 4/2006

Marketing and psychology are closely related. If psychology is the ?systematic study of human behavior,? then marketing is the ?systematic study of human behavior in the marketplace.? Good-looking people, for example, tend to be perceived as more intelligent, more successful and more popular. That?s the halo effect in psychology. The halo effect also works in marketing. What?s behind the phenomenal success of Apple Computer? In a word, the iPod.

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Fixing General Motors
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 3/2006

And another thing. If the secret to success in the automotive industry is ?product, product, product,? then why is General Motors spending billions of dollars on advertising? As a matter of fact, GM has been the largest advertiser in America for 8 of the past 10 years. Would you believe that General Motors in the past decade spent $32.9 billion on advertising in the American market? Considering that GM had a recent market capitalization of $10.9 billion, the past decade of GM advertising cost more than three times the value of the entire company.

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Check it in reverse.
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 2/2006

Recently, the country of Guatemala hired a global branding consultancy to develop a new tourist strategy. According to the consultants: ?Extensive focus groups were carried out to understand the perspective of a broad range of Guatemalans, including the business, artistic, literary, hospitality and indigenous communities.? Guatemala?s new brand essence: ?Soul of the Earth.?

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Googling of the marketing industry
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 1/2006

The last time I checked, Google was worth $125 billion on the stock market. More than four times as much as General Motors and Ford combined. Not bad for two Stanford University graduate students who started the company in 1998 (and never did get their PhDs). What made Google one of the world?s most valuable brands and in the process made 1,000 of its employees millionaires? It wasn?t advertising.

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