Brand loyalty down during recession

"A study from Catalina Marketing and the CMO Council finds that for the average brand, more than half of consumers - 52% - who were highly loyal to certain package-goods brands in 2007 became markedly less so last year." Click here to see the complete article on Ad Age.

Popular package-goods such as Crest, PineSol and Tylenol lost more than a third of their highly loyal customers. It's been a tough period for brands. Buyers are much more price-sensitive during the recession. Even Coke, which held more than 60% of its loyal consumers, saw its revenue decline 6%. And it gets worse. Researches show that customers who traded down to store brands in past recessions tend not to come back to the major brands.

So the question is: what to do? The first and easiest thing everyone thinks about is to cut off the price, but that's the last thing you should think about. Reducing the price could have the opposite effect. Instead of getting customers back, you may encourage brand switching in a long term scenario. Companies should think of marketing actions to reward the loyal customers, showing that being loyal to your brand pays off. Doing some direct marketing, with special coupons, could be an alternative, and I'm sure there are many others. With a 15 minutes brainstorm companies could have hundreds of possible solutions. Most of times the easiest solution is not the best one. In situations like that, you should always see the big picture and look for long term solutions.

Being an intern sucks

Interns do jobs nobody wants to do, work twice as hard, don't get paid and need to hear jokes even from the maintenance guy. For some reason, JWT New York didn't think it was enough. So they created this "welcome" t-shirt for the summer interns.

Advertising Agency: JWT, NY, USA
Executive Creative Directors: Kash Sree, Ty Montague
Art Director: Jackie Anzaldi
Copywriter: Adam Noel

I bet you think your internship is not that bad now...

Ad of the day - June 22nd

Advertising Agency: BBDO Guerrero/ Proximity, Philippines
Chief Creative Officer: David Guerrero
Executive Creative Director: Joel Limchoc
Executive Creative Director: Simon Welsh
Copywriter: Meggy De Guzman
Art Director: Dale Lopez
Retoucher: Dale Lopez
Retoucher: Manny Vailoces
Producer: Al Salvador

Advertising that works

The Get a Mac campaign started in 2006. In the 1st quarter of that year, Apple iMac's market share was at 4%, according to the market research firm Gartner. After 2 years and a half, in the 3rd quarter of 2008, iMac's market share reached 9,5%. A 135% growth. The iMac sales alone - more than $14 billion in 2008 - were greater than Apple's entire product lines in 2005, including the iPod. It can't get more effective than that.

The commercials are made by TBWA, starring Justin Long (from Die Hard 4.0) as the Mac and the humorist John Hodgman as the PC, and they are really well directed by Phil Morrison. It's almost if they were in a play, acting on a white background, with dialogues full of humor and sarcasm. Mac's brand image is well represented by its character. While PC is an old guy, with boring clothes and dorky look, Mac is cool, with casual clothes and has a younger attitude. Here's some of the 30' spots:

You can see all the TV spots here.

source: macobserver.com

Time Machine #2

Second edition of the Time Machine. This campaign was made by Saatchi & Saatchi for the Buenos Aires Zoo, in Argentina. It was published in 2003, and it's one of the most famous visual metaphors of all times. The campaign is to celebrate the Zoo's 115 years, and the way they transformed the briefing into this idea is simply brilliant. Very smart insight combined with great photography. No copy. The image speaks for itself.

By the way, Saatchi & Saatchi has made awesome campaigns for the Buenos Aires Zoo. I'm going to post some of them later.

Ad of the day - June 19th

Get them off your dog.

Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Jakarta, Indonesia
Chief Creative Officer: Andy Greenaway
Executive Creative Director: Juhi Kalia
Art Directors: Aryanto Salim, Joel Clement
Copywriters: Pancaputera, Juhi Kalia
Photographer: Heret Frasthio
Producers: Annisa Mulyani, Muhammad Iskak
Account Supervisors: Dini D. Makmun, Shanty Lestari
Released: January 2009

Thinking outside the box

Many factors should be considered when designing a package. The brand value and image are at stake. It plays a very important role in the positioning process and, if it's well done, can boost a product's sales. And it's even more important for certain categories of products, such as alcoholic drinks and electronic devices. Here's some examples of creative and efficient packaging designs:

And below there's a new trend in the packaging design, which is the reuse of the package after the product has been consumed. Packages are being used as furniture, decoration pieces, home appliances, toys etc. It's definitely a great way to add value to the product, giving your brand a huge advantage in the buying decision. Check out some examples:

As you can see, a product's package can be used in may ways, and it's very effective to promote a new product, a promotion or just to differentiate your brand from the others. So if your designing a package, think outside the box. Literally.