Announcing the news of Ferguson’s retirement on Twitter was not only surprisingly modern, but by seeding the hashtag #thankyousiralex, they also took control of the news’ reception – the story being spun towards thanking Sir Alex rather than uncertainty of ‘what’s next for united’
If you were advising Ed Balls on how to handle the gloriously silly, utterly pointless and very British Ed Balls meme, what would you tell him?
If he were to tweet “Ed Balls” today, entirely deadpan, people would love him.
I’ve read articles about the classic FedEx logo before, but this interview with the design team about the power of negative whitespace is worth a look.
The key to success was subtlety. When you’ve got a genuine bit of magic in your hands, don’t push it at people. Let it happen.
FedEx’s PR firm immediately wanted to supersize it. They wanted to make it obvious, fill it in with another color. They wanted to feature the arrow in other brand communications. They didn’t get it. It wasn’t about the arrow. An arrow isn’t even interesting to look at. It’s only because of the subtlety that it’s intriguing.
I love how O2 dealt with the social media backlash whilst their service was down yesterday
Rather than mimicking Apple’s “gorgeous” style of demoing products (as Facebook and Microsoft do), Google yesterday played to their geek strengths and raised the bar sky high.
Google Glass could be thought of as as a.n.other of their barking tech adventures, but by bringing to life the magic of sharing what you’re seeing in this incredible, audacious way, they’ve opened a new frontier.
How long before Sportsmen and women are wearing descendents of Google Glass whilst playing their games? I can see Sky Sports gagging for this.
Not really of course, but it’s a pretty good gag and will play well amongst the early adopter/geeky market who may feel they’ve lost the brand to new owners Facebook
HT to petapixel
Brilliant.
Hat tip to Nupur Manchanda via Michelle Tilly Lonsdale
What a great way to launch a TV channel
Nice touch: personalised notebooks at today’s Think Google event.
No big “come and get yours” sign, but subtle self discovery. I was the first person to arrive and it took me a few seconds to twig why so many names were on the bookshelf.
Just read an enjoyable article about John Peel’s producer and general wit John Walters. He spent many years bringing interesting, new arts to the masses, best summed up in his wonderful stated aim,
To give the public what they didn’t know they wanted
Some great examples of get-noticed thinking listed here
Brands don’t usually die because of some apocalyptic event/mistake (though it can happen), rather they suffer death by a thousand cuts, each of which seem innocuos enough, even sensible. But they chip away at the magic and by the time sales have suffered enough for someone to notice, the negative brand equity momentum has long become unstoppable.
This post by Seth Godin today summarises this point terrifically, where he explains the magical, intangible elements that make for great marketing, and how easy it is to kill them. Referring to a great little restaurant, he says:
…it’s the hand-fitted gestalt of thousands of little decisions made by caring management out to make a difference. Usually, when a business like this gets bigger or turns into a chain, marketers make what feel like smart compromises. The MBAs collide with the mystical, and the place gets boring. “Why do we need 14 free salsas when we can get away with six?”
When I got two copies of this CD through the post, I groaned. Not because I had been a doofus in ordering twice, but because returning items is usually so painful.
So it was with delight that I got this message from Amazon when starting the Returns process. That’s customer service good enough for me to tell everyone in ear-shot in the office.
Well this is audacious. Their explanation says it all
This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city.
Amazing story of how someone tracked down the thief of his laptop and posted its webcam pictures for everyone to see.
It’s fantastic publicity for the tracking software used, Hidden. Had this been a deliberate PR stunt, it would have been genius.
