Musings of a Marketing Maven

Christine Thompson> What's on my mind: life and work

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Entries Tagged as 'Brand Matters'

Growing a Yoga Studio in a Crowded Market

February 7th, 2012 · 8 Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing, Yoga

Are you con­fronting the chal­lenge of open­ing a new yoga stu­dio, get­ting estab­lished as a newly cer­ti­fied teacher, or attract­ing more stu­dents in a com­pet­i­tive urban area?

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The Real Problem with Netflix

September 30th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Brand Matters, Tools & Technology

Con­sumers are enraged at Net­flix’ steep price increases with good rea­son — a 60% increase is hard to take dur­ing a pro­longed reces­sion. As a result well over 1 mil­lion have already can­celled their sub­scrip­tion. From the consumer’s POV, Net­flix’ lat­est plans to split the offer­ing into two unre­lated ser­vices, Net­flix and Qwik­ster, are utterly […]

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& The Beatles: Love At Last">Apple & The Beatles: Love At Last

November 16th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Brand Matters, Marketing

As a girl, I shiv­ered one night in the base­ment where our TV had been ban­ished, and thrilled to the Bea­t­les’ Amer­i­can debut. Not all my shiv­ers were from the cold of that unheated room… I’d fallen in love. A land­mark event Print PDF

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What Story Does Your Face Tell?

June 23rd, 2010 · 1 Comment · Brand Matters, Marketing

My brother is writ­ing a book with his step­daugh­ter about their scar­ily par­al­lel sto­ries as can­cer fight­ers and sur­vivors. At the moment, they’re work­ing on author pho­tos for the book cover. This process has made me think about the sto­ries that faces tell, or hint at; the mes­sages that can be per­ceived sub­lim­i­nally when your […]

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My Phone Company Is Stupid and Wasteful

January 13th, 2010 · Comments Off · Brand Matters, Marketing

I wish some agency that spe­cial­izes in intel­li­gent data­base min­ing and direct mar­ket­ing would help my local phone com­pany stop wast­ing trees on fruit­less direct mail pieces. Here’s the deal: my recy­cle bin now con­tains some­where between 5 and 10 pieces of unopened direct mail offers from Qwest, Print PDF

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& Branding">On Biking & Branding

November 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters

The cycling sub-culture offers an inter­est­ing envi­ron­ment for observ­ing the power of brand­ing in action. Over the years I’ve learned that the “boys who bike” are very sta­tus con­scious, and proudly dis­play team affil­i­a­tions and other brand badges all over their bod­ies, their bikes and their gear. I’ve also learned that if you ride the “wrong” bike, you’re invis­i­ble to your fel­low cyclists.

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Learning from Parisian Shop Windows

November 13th, 2009 · Comments Off · Brand Matters, Marketing

I love strolling and win­dow shop­ping in Paris. There’s a spe­cial mys­tique that win­dow dressers in Paris employ that brand teams and mar­keters every­where would do well to emu­late. Shop win­dows in Paris do a won­der­ful job of con­vey­ing the idea of what’s being sold — of con­vey­ing the brand essence, help­ing you envi­sion how […]

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Marketing to Women: 2 Examples

November 12th, 2009 · Comments Off · Brand Matters, Marketing

After blog­ging about “the female econ­omy” as the world’s biggest untapped mar­ket oppor­tu­nity, I’ve been on the look­out for evi­dence that com­pa­nies and brands are mar­ket­ing specif­i­cally to women. I’ve seen a cou­ple of exam­ples recently, an encour­ag­ing sign. Both offers focus on help­ing women over­come the gaps in our under­stand­ing of mechan­ics – things most […]

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Falling Out of Love with QuickBooks

October 30th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters, Tools & Technology

For years I’ve loved Quick­Books – a tool that made man­ag­ing my company’s money remark­ably pleas­ant. I used to rave about it to col­leagues. But over the past sev­eral prod­uct releases I’ve become dis­en­chanted; I think Intuit has lost its way, and has lost sight of whose inter­est it was pur­su­ing. No longer cus­tomer centered […]

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Visualizing Your Digital Persona

October 13th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters, Tools & Technology

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have released an online tool that  attempts to char­ac­ter­ize your dig­i­tal per­sona based on data min­ing of online resources. Right now the tool is in the fun and exploratory phase, but it offers food for thought. Have you ever won­dered what your dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints might look like, if there […]

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