The results of the Top brand survey by Brandchannel.com have not changed significantly from last year as far as first two slots are concerned. According to some 3,600 respondents (mostly students and branding specialist), Google tops the list of brands impacting our lives the most. Apple remains the second on the list while Google owned YouTube has been ranked three and Wikipedia is on the fourth position. � �

The debut of the newcomers like YouTube in third and Wikipedia in fourth, is being cited as an indication of the growing impact of online brands built on user-generated contents.Other winners include social network website MySpace which has reached the 15^th position globally, ahead of Aljazeera on 19^th. The asian results are however more in the favor of traditional brand with � Sony, Toyota, HSBC, Samsung and Honda respectively taking up the first five slots.

Full Details on Reuters

There are many available definitions ofÂ� ‘brand’. The Dictionary of Business and Management defines a brand as: “a name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors.” Most of the available dictionary sources define brand as a packaged product only carrying a trade mark name. Some sources have even defined a brand as a manufactured product only.With the recent paradigm shift in marketing thinking, a few branding experts have defined a ‘brand’ as a corner of space in the minds of brand consumers. According to their definition, a brand is mental representation of their interaction with the brand.However, a ‘brand’ should be more suitably defined as a “sum total of all the experiences associated with a product/service or non-product/service entity”.

According to this short definition, a brand is not limited to the physical product or tangible service only. A brand is more than that and beyond. The experiences associated with the brand are not limited to the physical interaction with the product/service. By this definition, a brand can be a product/service entity like a detergent, an insurance company and also a non-product/service entity like a politician, a lawyer, an uncle and even a country.This definition is a better definition of a brand for the following reasons:
1) This definition makes it absolutely clear that a brand is beyond a product or service and may or may not include a tangible product/service.
2) A brand is a sum total of experiences that help consumers form a brand perception in their minds. The perception itself is not a brand but it’s just a mental representation of brand experiences and this nullifies many theories on brand definition.
3) This definition also clarifies that a brand is built not only through effective advertising but a brand is built through the total experience that it offers.

Effective communication is essential for building a strong brand. A good marketing campaign can literally sell anything and almost everything. A marketing text book even says that the real marketing is the ability to sell ice to Eskimos by making them realize that they actually needed to buy ice.

However, there’s one major limitation to the power of advertising. A marketer’s ability is limited to generating trial only – there are more factors also responsible for bringing the repeat purchase. Most importantly, the brand must deliver on the brand promise made by the marketer.

The role of advertising varies from brand to brand depending upon the nature of the product/service. The products with strong functional benefits will be less influenced by the power of communication and the products that bring emotional and non-functional benefits obviously will be more influenced by the effectiveness of advertising.

For commercial product/service brands, effective Brand building is instead a function of 4 P’s of marketing and importance of each P varies depending on the nature of the product/service being marketed.

MarketingSherpa has just recently announced its Annual Email Marketing Summit to be held in Miami March 4-6th. Around 30 renowned marketers are presenting email advertising case-studies based on their real life email marketing campaigns.

MarketingSherpa boasts this Summit as the largest annual industry event of its kind.

The detailed agenda and event info is available at:
http://www.sherpastore.com/Email-Summit.html

eBooks are probably the most underperforming of all the internet related inventions. When the� ‘eBook’ concept was launched a mere 5-6 years back, we all expected a lot of miracles with this technology.� I was one of the earlier users of http://www.eBooks.org and really looked forward to a time when I could go online and buy a pdf version of any book I wanted.� But even after the technology is out for a reasonable time now, there are still no quality books out there in pdf format, except those cheap fiction and $ 2 ‘get rich quick’ books mainly promoting online scams.

The way internet has changed music and video is phenomenal. Look at Apple who has altogether shifted the way we used to buy and listen to music. It has now become instantly downloadable, easily portable and relatively affordable. � The same is true with video, Youtube has � transformed everything in a short period of time.

Then why not books when the biggest commodity on internet is still the written word or the content.� Like the demise of VHS tapes & audio tapes, ‘when will we see the end of printed books and why this has not taken off like other internet applications’ is an important question.� However the answer might not be very simple. Despite that books offer less interactivity and internet has found more interactive ways of sharing knowledge & ideas like Wikipedia and internet blogs, printed books are still the largest source of knowledge and many of us still love to read them.� I wish to see exciting developments on projects like Google Book Search and whether there is any significant development in this area with Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies.

�

According to Alterian’s transatlantic annual survey of more than 500 US direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies, eighty-five percent of respondents expect their online direct marketing expenditures to increase in 2007. The spending projection is the largest expected increase since the Alterian Annual Survey began in 2003.

The survey findings show a strong� bias towards email marketing and customized landing pages for the subscriber. About 94 percent of respondents who said they will decrease offline spending said they will increase online spending while 70 percent of respondents said they apply basic or no analysis to any of their email campaigns.

The overall results are not entirely unexpected considering the strong momentum in online marketing growth but lack of analysis is a bit disturbing considering there are fewer missing data points & grey areas with online marketing than offline. Perhaps, most of the industry is just following each other than researching a bit more and spending wisely than increasing the frequency & speed of email newsletters.

A full copy of the results can be obtained by emailing � at annualsurvey@alterian.com.

If you don’t go out and see this upcoming Will Ferrel movie, you are missing out. It’s like ‘Anchorman’ but better! In 2002, two rival Olympic ice skaters were stripped of their gold medals and permanently banned from men’s single competition. Presently, however, they’ve found a loophole that will allow them to qualify as a pairs team.Â�

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Tenacious D (Jack Black and ‘that’ guy) were the masteminds behind this twisted commercial where a young girl almost talks to her mother about her period. What’s a good mother to do than give her daughter a Tenacious D CD to help her deal with her monthly ordeal. Enjoy.

Check this out, its been awarded commercial of the year. Shows evolution going in reverse. Apparently Darwn was right. We did evolve out of natural selection….. for Guiness Beer of course!

Check this out, its been awarded commercial of the year. Shows evolution going in reverse. Apparently Darwn was right. We did evolve out of natural selection….. for Guiness Beer of course!

This was a promo video Nintendo Power subscribers received before the release of Starfox 64. Sony and Sega tried squeeze out information about the secret innovative rumble pack from Nintendo.

Sick of your marketing / advertising job? Take an interesting tip from this guy with the boom box announcing he’s quitting his job in the vdeo below.

You heard right, before Jack Black was starring in ‘King Kong’ he was speaking with a fake accent pitching the ‘Pit Fall’ game for The Atari.

Ready Set Holiday is a new website with useful features for holiday shoppers. Launched on behalf of M80 and Sears, the new service website enables visitors to prepare for the holidays with a complete holiday planner and recipie guide including a message board forum to discuss gift giving ideas. The website also includes merchandise from Sears, KMart, and Lands’ End while allowing users to shop with price comparison and by cateogry of interest.

The website as a whole is a terrific example of blending traditional holiday gift items (some organized as under $25) with new age online shopping. I would highly recommend checkin out Ready Set Holiday.com for your gift giving this year.

This week the company let me test drive their service with a gift certificate. I bought an HP Photosmart C3140 Printer / Scanner / Copier. The thing is pretty amazing for the small $99.99 sticker tag. It has a fast and reliable printing speed. You can print, scan, and copy reliably and quickly - photos as fast as 25 seconds and documents up to 22 ppm black, up to 20 ppm color - with this compact all-in-one. It brings true to life, long lasting photos and documents. You can create briliant photos, reprint, and laser quality documents at home with the HP Vivera Inks that are included.

The whole experience was incredible. The best and last thing I’ll mention is that you have the choice of picking up the item in the store of having it shipped out to you. Enjoy!

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