5 Things Electronical that are Within Reach
- iPad
- iPhone
- Panasonic Lumix camera
- Garmin Forerunner 310XT
- Sharp COMPET VX-1138A calculator
My MacBook Air doesn’t count since I am using it to create this enthralling and exciting post. Next up 5 pictures of grass growing.
5 Things Electronical I Use Everyday
- MacBook Air
- iPad
- iPod (yes, still have and use this)
- iPod Nano
- iPhone
I think this means I am no longer a PC and have officially switched over to the dark side.
The 5 Things in my Pocket
- money
- chapstick
- house keys
- credit cards
- iphone
This is just in case anyone out there was wondering.
Gigwalk iPhone App
I thought I would share an interesting app I found, only for iPhones right now, where you can make a little cash while just walking around and taking pictures. Basically, people post “gigs”, you do the gigs (all the ones I have seen are just taking a picture), upload it to the application and collect the bounty for that gig, it is that easy. You are not going to get rich doing this or be able to quit your job, but you could probably pay for that daily Starbucks non-fat, extra hot, caramel latte you have everyday. Check out www.gigwalk.com to learn more and sign up.
The New Rules of Brand Competition : Brave New Marketing : Fast Company
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
By: Joel Rubinson
The old branding model is past its “sell by” date. It is a product-centered model that comes from packaged goods in the ’70s and ’80s; offer differentiated benefits that a particular consumer segment is thought to care about. “My peas are picked at the peak of sweetness”…that kind of thing. This model is breaking down as people try store brands and find they are “fit for purpose” at a better price. Now what?
Change the model.
People live life in four dimensions. We have functional needs, but we also are social creatures, have self-expressive needs, and crave content that we find to be entertaining and informative. Thinking this way reveals new ways of making your brand relevant:
- Functional: go from “product feature” to “solution-based” thinking
- Social: make your brand a celebrity that is fanned, friended, and followed. Or, create a thematic environment around a value shared by your brand and its customers (e.g. Dove and “the real meaning of beauty”)
- Self-expressive: the brand must stand for something so clearly understood, it is cultural currency
- Content: become the logical and top of mind source for content centered on what your brand is about
But here’s the catch; your competitive set will change as you offer new constructs…new ways to categorize. This takes us to the idea of a “mental marketplace” where your brand must vie for attention against other brands that are functionally unrelated. Product brands can even find they compete with celebrities and news publishers.
Noah Brier has created a freely available tool called brand tags. (You should also check out mattermeter.) Brandtags displays a logo and asks you to type the first thing that comes to mind when you see a particular brand’s logo. You can then see what that brand means to everyone else.
3M competes with Apple in the mental marketplace of innovation but they express their brands differently. Experience the Apple store in SOHO. Apple has leveraged innovation, cool, and edginess into self-expression, a sense of belonging and maybe a little bit of “theme park” thrown in. Oh by the way, Apple stores reached $1 billion in sales faster than any other chain in history (previous record-holder was the Gap).
Whole Foods vies in the mental marketplace of health/fresh with Dannon, Kashi, and Subway (and others, of course). Whole Foods “competes” via brand community across social media (e.g. 800,000+ Twitter followers), has a wonderful blog and iPhone app about a wellness lifestyle from organic/fresh foods. A Whole Foods shopping bag is almost a clubhouse handshake.
When a brand wins in its mental marketplace it leverages multi-layered connections with people into spontaneous credibility that converts into sales. The unfamiliar new product becomes instantly familiar.
If store brands are going to dominate the mental marketplace for “affordable;” where do you plan to play and win?
- “Break In” Directed by David Fincher, First TV Commercial For New Apple iPhone 3G S (laughingsquid.com)
- The 100 Most Mentioned Brands on Twitter (businesspundit.com)
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