Superbowl Sunday is watched just as much for the game as it is for the commercials. Getting a spot on the commercial is pricey, at a whopping $3.5 million bucks for a 30 second spot. But, is the price is worth it? Well, each year the commercials not only receive millions and millions of live impressions, but also stream virally on YouTube and are shared on other social media platforms. Blogs compare, experts rate, consumers comment, we all watch. An example?  In 2000, when Anheuser-Busch aired their now iconic “Wassup” commercial, “Wassup” was adopted into American vocabulary after it aired. From commercial on the Super Bowl, into Merriam Websters. That’s impact.

This year, Welt noticed that, more than usual, Super Bowl commercials are being previewed before the big game. As of February 1, fourteen brands, including the ever so anticipated Volkswagen, had launched the commercials. But why? Anticipation makes the commercials all that more exciting. Continue reading »

Welt Branding sat down with Mike Dover, co-author of Wiki Brands: Reinventing Your Company In A Customer-Driven Marketplace, and had a discussion about a few of his branding insights and their impact on businesses. Wiki Brands discusses what companies have done in the past, what they are doing now, and what they should be doing with branding efforts. The authors analyze the effects these efforts have on brands, and highlight some key concepts any executive or marketer should consider.

Don Tapscott’s research program known as Marketing 2.0 initiated Wiki Brands. Dover ran the operations for this program while Sean Moffitt, co-author of Wiki Brands, wrote its research papers in conjunction with other faculty members. The two were granted permission to take existing work and expand it to book form by continuing their own research as well as updating existing results.

Here is a sample of their findings:

Brand managers make a series of mistakes in their branding efforts, which can be simplified into three elements.

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This year there were a number of campaigns that either affected our buying behavior or changed our opinion of a brand. Below are the five brands that were most influential to us brandlings.

Ford – Campaign: “Drive One” and “Swap Your Ride”

Growing up, everyone we didn’t like owned a Ford Explorer, and unfortunately, we began to associate our dislike for these people with that of the Ford brand. This past year, Ford has been heavily marketing its brand and products through a couple campaigns.

The “Swap Your Ride” campaign allows customers to drive a Ford vehicle for a week and then talk about their experience. The advertisements that cover this campaign are hosted and endorsed by Mike Rowe – who was named by Forbes magazine one of “Hollywood’s 10 Most Trustworthy Celebrities”.

The “Drive One” campaign is composed of actual Ford customers who come to the dealership to take part in a focus group. When they arrive they are led into a room that opens up to a surprise mock press conference.

These 2011 campaigns changed how we saw Ford, although both debuted a few years ago: “Swap My Ride” in 2007, and “Drive One” in 2008.  We don’t cringe at Ford cars anymore, in fact, we “check them out” when they drive by on the highway – and we’ll admit we’re very jealous of their 40mpg fuel economy.

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December marks the awakening of the Christmas spirit – and what is Christmas spirit without Holiday songs?

Brandlings put together a list of our favorite Christmas songs and songs that remind us of the Holiday season. Initially, we intended to create a top 10 list that we would share with our readers, however… when compiling everyone’s favorite songs, we very quickly realized that top 10 actually meant top 30.  Who really has just one favorite Christmas song anyway?

So, clank your mugs of egg nog, decorate your tree, enjoy your family, and get into the holiday spirit! This list has something for everyone. We have funny songs, hidden gems, classical, pop versions, and, of course, traditional.

Here is sample of what you have to look forward to:

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Jackson Five
Christmas Time Is Here, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi
Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Dean Martin
You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, Thurl Ravenscroft
All I Want For Christmas Is You, Mariah Carey
Carol Of The Bells, John Williams
Do They Know It’s Christmas, Feed The World, Band Aid
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Ella Fitzgerald
Santa Baby, The Swingle Singers
Rock Around The Clock, Bill Haley

If you want to listen in, we’ve shared the play list through Spotify on our Facebook page. Check it out!

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This week Welt sat down with Joe Alary, the brain behind tit4tat, a new campaign that will show the side of breast cancer that no one has yet had the courage to show. The campaign, currently based out of Canada, will show the reality of what cancer can do to those we love. To start, the campaign will feature a large poster showing nude breasts of ordinary women. All money raised from the poster sales will go to cancer research and awareness.

Q: Joe, tell us a little about yourself, what do you do?

A: I’ve been a video editor for almost 25 years with CityTv, MuchMusic and now the SPACE Channel in Toronto, a science fiction/genre themed specialty channel within the Canadian national network, CTV.  On summer weekends, I’m a skydiving instructor and coach. I’m 43 years old and I have two teenage daughters.

Q: So What’s tit4tat all about? What Made the Issue Important for You?

A: The project has just really started to evolve recently but it began as an idea for a coffee table book probably 20 years ago.  I’ve always been known to friends as a “boob man” and the idea for the book was that each page would feature an actual-size picture of ordinary women’s breasts.   Old, young, big, small, no airbrushing, just real boobs, real women, no faces, just the boobs.  For fun, women could actually hold a page up to their own chest to see what those boobs might look like on them.

At the time, it was not the easiest thing to pull together; there was no internet then, and asking women to let me take a picture of their boobs was daunting to say the least.  Along with the book however, I thought it would be a good idea to donate a percentage of the sales to cancer research.  Unfortunately the idea was shelved and sat there as a quirky memory that I would pull out as an interesting topic of discussion once in a while.

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