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If that’s movin’ up then I’m movin’ out July 14, 2008 in blogging, work/life | by David Gillespie | 1 comment I’d been umming and ahhing about what to do with this URL and site for a bit as it was out-growing its location. A day off work on Friday turned into 24 hours of r&d, getting under the hood of WordPress a little bit more. When the dust had settled I had migrated all of the content over to a new URL where phase two of this sometimes mis-guided but generally alright social experiment will continue. For those receiving this in a reader, this link will give you truth about enzyte the new RSS feed, please re-subscribe, I promise to make it worthwhile. Also for those who’d prefer, you can now subscribe via email. There are still a few kinks being ironed out in the CSS (look & feel) which will be taken care of over the next few days. For now though thanks for being with me over the past 7 or 8 months, where we go to from here is anyone’s guess. I hope to see you over at Creative Is Not A Department in the not too distant future. All the best, David – July 11, 2008 in branding, web 2.0 | Tags: Wordle | by David Gillespie | No comments Just came across a brilliant little tool called Wordle (thanks to Now In Colour). Punch in a URL or a piece of text and it will create a word cloud using the words appearing most often in the text. From the looks of things, we’re not where I originally thought this blog was going to go, but I feel like we’re moving in the right direction. July 11, 2008 in branding, marketing | Tags: Apple, Budweiser, Cadbury, Carlton Draught, McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, Vogue | by David Gillespie | No comments ...a story that is never completely told... “A great brand is a story that is never completely told.” I just clocked this over at TIGS, what a great quote. I was sitting having breakfast with a good friend yesterday morning and he was wondering aloud why some brands that couldn’t possibly have been bigger all of a sudden become tiny before disappearing completely. He was talking about a particular American beer (whose name I can’t remember) that was the Budweiser of its day (I couldn’t imagine saying anything more insulting about a beer, except maybe this). This has me thinking about brand extension - do brands therefore extend themselves because they finish the story they set out to tell? Once extended, do they find their story wasn’t al that interested in the first place? Thinking about the uber-brands, Cadbury certainly has story left to tell, as does Apple, Nike, Vogue, who else? Contrast that with brands that we perhaps know too much about, like Microsoft or McDonalds. Those are easy targets though, who else is out there that seems to have run out of things to say? (This also has me thinking about luxury brands, how open would not beat closed in that situation, and how not knowing the story adds to their appeal…hmmm that’s another post entirely.) – July 10, 2008 in branding, marketing | Tags: intent, Marketing Magazine | by David Gillespie | No comments My latest column is up over at Marketing Magazine’s site. I said a couple days ago I was thinking a lot about intent this week, call it a cosmic quest for something deeper than the window dressing. If I wasn’t in advertising, that would actually be a good thing. There’s a lot of talk lately about brands and the voices they speak with. Be it through products or services, conversation is the new currency through which everyone wants to be measured. If what we’ve been saying for a while now is true, and our brands are to be imbued with human traits and personalities in order to inform the way they speak to their audience, then we need to look at intent… The rest of the piece is over at Marketing Magazine. July 8, 2008 in marketing | Tags: intent, recommendations, sliced bread, trusted source | by David Gillespie | 1 comment If you tell me you are an expert, I will not seek your advice, let alone believe you. If however, a friend of mine tells me you’re an expert, have a product that will change my life, and a service that is the best thing since sliced bread, you will have my attention. You are not what you say you are (even if you are). Nor is your product, offering or service. It is what others say it is via their experience interacting with you. The web unearths intent, and people strip away the bullshit. Intent is a funny thing, I’m thinking a lot about that this week. Having said that, I intend to get over this cold, so I’m going to bed. |