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Rev'd Up Over Statistics

rex.briggs | 18 September, 2006 09:56
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I am fascinated by the way in which brands develop meaning, and how that meaning is communicated across various touchpoints, from Television, to the internet, to the buying experience itself. From the emergence of the earliest brands on pottery thousands of years ago, to the insights from neuroscience on the role brands play in constructing meaning - advertising and marketing fascinate me.

I am also intrigued and in love with sports cars, particularly Ferraris. Ferrari is one of those spectacular examples of a brand whose meaning is carried across touchpoints brilliantly in the product, their marketing, and the meaning consumers share with one another online and offline. I enjoy watching car racing, particularly Formula 1 (where the race teams intensively analyze over 4000 data points with teams of statistician making every adjustment possible in real-time to gain the winning edge). I also love the challenge of racing down the track myself whenever I get the chance.


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The View from Seoul

rex.briggs | 13 September, 2006 13:38
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As I look out my hotel window I see two fascinating sights. First, atop the beautiful and green mount Namsan is a dominating communication tower. I’ve read that it is the first complex broadcasting tower in Korea. It is equipped with a TV and FM sending antenna, cable antenna, communication antenna for mobile phone, and internet sending antenna. What a mix of media. I ponder which parts matter most to Koreans these days. It has to be the mobile phone and Internet, right? After all, this is one of the most advanced broadband internet economies in the world. I think back on the last evening before I finish packing my computer and heading for the airport. At dinner, a client showed me her home page. Everyone in Korea has a home page, she tells me. She shows me it on her mobile phone. When that tower was first opened to the public in 1980, it didn’t have mobile telephone technology or an Internet sending antenna and I doubt that they could have envisioned that in 25 years hence the importance of mobile and internet. The tower stands above the site of six ancient smoke stacks used to communicate hundreds of years earlier. The smoke stacks are simply there for decoration now. The communication now takes place every moment of the day through that amazing tower.

And then, I notice the second tower of communication. A much smaller tower. It is down on the corner. It is a bright red Coca-Cola vending machine. There aren’t as many of them per capita in Korea as in other countries such as Japan, but they play an interesting role – sitting there communicating. But are they communicating enough? Maybe once it was enough to simply repeat a brand name, but if that was ever true, it is less so today. Seems that today successful communication is about conveying meaning and that takes more than a logo. I look at the can of Coke at the minibar. Coca-Cola has done a great job getting the most out of the limited space of a can to communicate something about the brand. In fact, they have done more on that little can than they have on the much larger vending machine. That little tower shaped can has the yellow jerseys of the World Cup Football team – and by including them on the can shows Coke’s support of the team, and the connection of the beverage with the sport, and the sport fan. Sure the real estate on the can is limited, but Coke has made the most of it. Why doesn’t the vending machine do the same thing? Why is that vending machine tower under-communicating? And then my eyes return to the communication tower. How many marketers are simply pushing their logo and not greater meaning in their messages that they pump out of that communication tower over FM radio, Television, Cable TV, Internet and mobile devices?

Here’s a point for discussion: Do most marketers rely on their logo and fail to connect their brand with meaning for the consumer? Which are the media that offer marketers the best environments to convey meaning and why?


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