Mindshare Marketing

(I apologize for the lateness of today’s post.  Outside circumstances prevented it from appearing on time.)

Last night, I sacrificed a chunk of my evening to wait in line and then sit in a crowded room for 2 hours with a horde of strangers.  The ordeal left me with a greater respect for the ability to downplay buzz and create a great product when everything says that should be impossible.  Yes, I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie.

Like most everyone else, I’ve been waiting eagerly for the fourth installment in the series to finally hit theaters.  Oddly enough, it was far better than I expected, too!  When the movie was first announced in the press, I thought it would be a huge disappointment.  Harrison Ford has aged a few years since the last movie and we all had an image of the “perfect” fourth film built up in our minds.  There was no way the new movie could deliver like Raiders of the Lost Arc or The Last Crusade.  Even reports from the actors leading up to the premier cast doubt on major plot arcs and the story’s ability to impress viewers.

The show last night, though, was phenomenal!  It didn’t match up to Raiders (In truth, I doubt anything ever can), but it surpassed The Temple of Doom by miles!  It seems Ford “lied” about a few plot lines by denying he’d ever accept them in the film … only to have them turn up about halfway through.  The story was far better than anyone involved led us to believe.

They successfully lowered (at least my) expectations for the film, allowing for a knockout punch when it finally came out.  When a new product has this much hype and pent up anticipation, lowering expectations is the only avenue for success you have left.  Do you have a killer product on the market?  How can you use the same tactics to guarantee its ’sequel’ has the same reception by your customers?

It came to my attention the other day that Louis Vuitton is seeking damages from an artist who apparently infringed on their brand in a recent campaign to raise money for Darfur through the sale of t-shirts. The case itself has been discussed at length elsewhere, and I’ve already explained what L-V should do moving forward over on Smarter Markets.

Instead, let’s spend a minute looking at what happened and why. An artist named Nadia wanted to make a difference. She saw the trend in American media to cover celebrities (like Paris Hilton) and ignore human rights issues (like Darfur) because positive media is more popular than negative media. To fight this trend, she created a piece of art combining the two - displaying a victim of genocide holding a cute dog and a designer handbag.

Controversial? Definitely. Applicable? You bet. Hard to swallow? Absolutely.

This is where Louis Vuitton comes in. The image above doesn’t identify any specific designer label, but seemingly condemns all designer labels. As a designer brand, L-V was deeply (and adversely) affected by this campaign. Immediately, L-V was faced with several options for addressing Nadia’s artwork.

For a moment, let’s assume L-V hasn’t made their decision yet and has instead placed you in charge of determining their response. You can:

1. Ignore it
2. Condemn it
3. Embrace it

Each option carries its own ramifications. Ignoring the art has the short-term benefit of clearing your conscience. Unfortunately, it carries the long term cost of damaging your brand because you ignored the opportunity to make a contribution to global change. Condemning the art is the action L-V did pursue. What this has led to is massive public awareness of Nadia’s campaign and a bucket load of negative brand equity thrown in the direction of L-V’s management.

A more effective road would be to embrace the campaign. The designer bag in the image is not a Louis Vuitton, but it got their attention. What L-V could do is support the t-shirt and instead condemn the Hollywood-applied brand image of apathetic movie stars and superficial models who tote Louis Vuitton products as a way to flout their ability to spend massive amounts of money while children are haphazardly murdered in foreign countries.

This is the message Nadia tried to display through her art. Without a response from Louis Vuitton, this message had the capacity to utterly destroy a powerful international brand. Unfortunately, the response issued has caused nearly as much damage as ignoring it would have. Now, the Louis Vuitton brand is clearly associated with the crisis in Darfur … as an international brand that cares more about protecting its own assets than making a difference.

How do you think Louis Vuitton could have instead embraced Nadia’s campaign? If you had been in charge of managing the L-V brand, how would you have approached this situation. Consider your brand had been involved instead, what would you have done and why?

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?  Would a Mac by any other name be as cool?

This was a question I posed in a recent article on SmarterMarkets.com.  Is Mac just another brand of PC, albeit with superior brand awareness and advertising?  I asked several people this question over the past week and I can tell you, to the average consumer, everything is in the name.

“If there are two identical computers on the table - same processor, same peripherals, same hard drives - but one is a Mac and one is a Dell, which would you buy?”  Hand’s down, all but one person said, ‘Mac.’

I repeated the experiment, explaining to some that Windows Vista would be installed on both systems and to some that Mac OS would be installed on both systems.  Still, nearly everyone said they would buy the Mac over the Dell.  Delving further, I would remind my interviewees that there were zero differences between the computers - every element was identical between the two machines.

This made no difference in their opinion, Mac was the way to go.

This speaks to the sheer power of the Mac brand name.  So what’s in a name?  Everything!  How strong is your brand name?