In keeping with the theme of recent blog posts on Superbowl commercials, I thought I would share with you this list of the 10 Weirdest TV Ads in History.

Some are simply weird, others are just too strange to explain. And in almost every case, with the exception of the Coca-Cola I’d like to teach the world to sing spot, you have to ask yourself “what were they thinking?”

But if you are a fan of TV advertising, or interested in the history of the TV commercial, all are worth watching.

Let me know what you think of these.

Of course, not so long ago you had to actually watch the game in order to see the commercials. Now, of couse, all of the commercials are readily available the day after on various websites.

For those of you who missed the commercials, and for those of us living outside the US and not able to view these, here are two websites feauring all of the spots:

Advertising Age

Mashable 

I haven’t had the chance to view all of these yet, but I writer I admire, Thom Forbes in his MediaPost blog, was less impressed with this year’s collection. From the ones I’ve viewed thus far, I must admit I agree with his comments that ”it was all much ado about mediocrity.”

Do you agree?

It’s Super Bowl Sunday in America.

This means the two most talked about topics for the next 48 hours will be a football game and the advertising shown during the commercial breaks of the TV broadcast.

I cannot tell you much about the game itself, except that most forecasters predict a closely fought battle between two evenly matched teams.

But to get you into the marketing mood for the TV commercials, here are two compilations of previous Super Bowl commercials worth watching:

10 Super Bowl Ads That Overpowered Their Products

Are These the 10 Funniest Super Bowl Commercials Ever?

You can also vote at Huffington Post on some of the best Super Bowl commercials of all time.

Enjoy.

And let us know what you think about these spots in the comments section below. Which is your all-time favorite?

The recently released Weber Shandwick research study, The Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust, shows conclusively that consumers around the globe are making product and brand purchase decisions based on company reputations.

Additionally, the survey shows that customers use several methods to find out who manufactures and sells the products and brands being considered, including reading labels and conducting their own research.

This study shows that:

·         67% of consumers increasingly check product labels to see what company is behind the product they are buying

·         70% will avoid buying a product if they do not like the company behind the product

·         56% hesitate to buy products if they cannot tell who makes them

·         61% get annoyed when they cannot tell what company is behind a particular product or brand

·         56% conduct their own research to learn more about the companies that make what they intend to buy

Consumers are keen to know what a company is doing to (or for) the environment, where products are being manufactured, and how the employees are being treated. A good example of this last point is the storm that has erupted in the past week about how the employees at a manufacturing facility making Apple products are treated. In just a few short days, over 110,000 people have signed an open petition asking Apple to intervene with their supplier as there are no labor laws in China to protect these staff.

In addition, there are now calls to boycott Apple products and a New York Times article last week was headlined “In China, human costs are built into an iPad.”

Another source of information for consumers is the BrandKarma website, where anyone can rate a brand or company on the quality of their products, how well they treat people, and how well they look after the planet. Apple, which scores high for Product Karma, has a cumulative below average score for both People Karma and Planet Karma.

The Weber Shandwick survey report states, “As consumers around the world have greater online access to a brand’s lineage, the influence of the brand parent, or company behind the brand, matters even more.”

The bottom line, as we wrote in the Monday Morning Marketing Memo this week, is that corporate reputations and corporate image actually matter more than ever and they have a major impact on the sales performance of brands and products. To think (or act) otherwise is simply foolish.

Tags: corporate, branding

Corporate reputations impact brand and product sales performance. That’s one of the key findings from a recent global study by Weber Shandwick called The Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust.

As the survey report states, “As consumers around the world have greater online access to a brand’s lineage, the influence of the brand parent, or company behind the brand, matters even more.”

The study identified Six New Realities of Corporate Reputation, which the PR firm says serves as reminders that business leaders cannot view their company’s reputation and their product brands as separately as they once did. These six “new realities” are:

1.       The corporate brand is as important as the product brand(s).

2.       Corporate reputation provides product quality assurance.

3.       Any disconnect between corporate and product reputation triggers sharp consumer reaction.

4.       Products drive customer discussions, with reputation close behind.

5.       Consumers shape corporate reputations instantly.

6.       Corporate reputation contributes to company market value.

In actuality, none of these are truly “new” realities, other than perhaps the ability of consumers to now shape corporate reputations instantly via social media.

All were highlighted, in one way or another, in my book Corporate Image Management: A Marketing Discipline which was published in 1998.

However, today’s more conversant and knowledgeable consumer is more aware of the companies behind branded products and services. They are also more informed and responsive to the actions of these companies.

The study showed that 67% of consumers report that they increasingly check product labels to see what company is behind the product they are buying, and a full 56% will hesitate to buy a product if they cannot tell who makes it.

Plus, as we highlighted in this week’s Monday Morning Marketing Memo, a walloping  70% of the consumers surveyed in this study reported that they avoid buying a product if they do not like the company behind the product.

This survey confirms that what I wrote 14 years ago in Corporate Image Management still rings true today: the ultimate battleground for winning and maintaining customer relationships takes place in the minds, hearts, emotions, and perceptions of customers.

Which is why corporate reputations matter more than ever.

To describe Neil French as rakish is utterly wrong. There has never been anything “ish” about this giant of a man.

(You could classify him as a rake, but that probably does injustice to all the other tools in the shed.)

I recently finished reading his memoirs, whose title Sorry for the Lobsters will resonate with everyone who can recall what traveling around Asia was like 30+ years ago. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to truly understand how powerful great advertising can be, and unfortunately how most of what the advertising industry produces is mere crap disguised in loudness, padded ideas and a pandering to the lower common denominator of a targeted (though not necessarily understood) audience.

This is a great book for those of us who have personally known Neil and admired the brilliance of his thinking and the profundity of his copywriting skills. As such it is a wonderful voyage down the numerous paths he has taken — from novice bullfighter in Spain to part-time gangster along the streets and back alleys of London, to a rock band promoter and eventually as a paradigm shift changing, Godlier than God Creative Director first in Asia and eventually globally.

A revealing and worthy narrative on his personal journey through what has certainly been a life truly lived, Sorry for the Lobsters is a fabulous read with just enough sidetracks in the tale to make the reader wonder what Neil will get up to next.

Far more important however, especially to those in the advertising industry who are unfortunate not to have been directly impacted by Neil’s devotion to creative thinking and execution excellence, is the book’s Appendix.

For in the Appendix are shared Neil’s frank and forthright gems on the pluses and minuses of advertising. These essays and short pieces, written in the latter stages of his career for various industry and in-house publications, include a plethora of golden nuggets, such as:

In any ad there is a minimum of four elements: headline, picture, copy, logo. If you can do an ad that really works using only one of these elements, you’ve got a winner. Two elements only, and it’ll be pretty good. If you can’t get below four, it’s possible that the basic idea isn’t strong enough, or that you haven’t expressed it well enough.

Reductio ad absurdum. Try it. It works.

* * * * *

To me, writing an ad is talking on paper.

It’s not really writing at all. It’s just a chat.

The art is all about knowing to whom you’re talking.

You lose them the moment you stop talking one-on-one, and start pontificating to “the audience.”

* * * * *

An ad that resembles what the competition is doing is likely to help the competition.

* * * * *

It’s your career. It’s your life. And I can assure you nobody’s last words were ever “I wish I’d made that logo a bit bigger.”

With katana sword precision, Neil gave a cutting and penetrating soliloquy on integrity, and the relative lack of it in the advertising business, in his acceptance speech when given a Clio Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. If anything, his words are more relevant today, almost a decade later, and equally consignable to the worlds of business, politics and government. But that’s another story for another day.

In the meantime, if you want to see great advertising from a master of copywriting and strategic thinking, go to the Neil French website. The examples there will simply amaze.

He was a master craftsman and a crafty wordsmith (and undoubtedly still is).

In Neil’s words, he “just wrote the ads.”

And many a brand manager and CEO (not to mention agency heads) whose bonuses he enlarged were glad he did.

In another stunning move, Netflix announced today that it was abandoning its move to split websites for its DVD movie rentals and streaming businesses, and dropping the Qwikster name.

As we wrote less than a month ago, previous moves by the company’s management was effectively destroying its brand equity.

While the question of what the Netflix brand stands for still remains, this move today will undoubtedly put the Netflix brand back on firmer ground. Whether they regain the hundreds of thousands of lost customers is another question.

I guess every generation needs to have its “New Coke” moment. Hastings and his senior crew at Netflix have brought us ours, even surpassing the miscues made last year by the Gap logo saga.

What are your thoughts? Is the Netflix brand back on the road to salvation?

What’s the missing link between the value your organization delivers and the sales you need to build a sustainable business?

Most likely it’s the quality of the sales conversations you have with prospective customers (and potential investors for that matter).

The third video in the Entrepreneurial Selling series from RAIN Group president Mike Schultz, author of the best-selling book Rainmaking Conversations, shows entrepreneurs and small business owners How to Lead Masterful Sales Conversations.

This 20-minute video shows how to connect with the people you want to have the most sales success possible.

These three videos on Entrepreneurial Selling are being made available for free for just the next week or so. Go watch Masterful Conversations today and share your comments below.

The entrepreneur’s job is big, and sales comprises a small percentage of the overall responsibility of being an entrepreneur or a small business owner bringing an idea, product or service to the market.

And, for most entrepreneurs and small business owners, sales is not even the job you want to be doing!

Yet, the real reason so many entrepreneurs and small business owners fail is that they never learn how to sell.

For this reason, I am partnering with Mike Schultz and the RAIN Group on the marketing of a free, three-part video series on Entrepreneurial Selling. These videos are based on the concepts found in the best-selling book Rainmaking Conversations.

The second video shows how Communicating Your Value helps to overcome the Most Common Selling Mistakes made by entrepreneurial sellers.

These three videos on Entrepreneurial Selling are being made available for free for just the next few weeks. Go watch Communicating Your Value today and share your comments below.

Ever wonder why some of the most innovative businesses fail and yet many mediocre ones succeed?

Some people attribute entrepreneurial success to luck or timing. Others believe business success depends on networks or connections. And unfortunately too many believe great ideas, products or services will sell themselves (the “build it and they will come” mentality).

The real reason so many entrepreneurs and small business owners fail is that they never learn how to sell.

For this reason, I am partnering with the RAIN Group on the marketing of a three-part free video series on Entrepreneurial Selling. These videos were created by Mike Schultz, president of RAIN Group and the best-selling author of Rainmaking Conversations.

Details and the key learning points from this video series are on our website.

The first video is on the Most Common Selling Mistakes made by entrepreneurs. These are the ones to avoid at all cost.

After you watch the first video you will receive notifications on when the other two videos are released for reviewing (both scheduled for next week).

Watch the first video and share your comments below.