Stunt Double Industries: The Blog

The venerable Volvo brand, known for reliability and safety, was sold yesterday by Ford to The Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Based in Hangzhou, and its majority-owned automotive subsidiary, Geely Automobile Holdings, is ranked #12 in overall production. Geely autos has made significant inroads manufacturing subcompacts and less expensive compacts – and now, it joins the big boys at the top.

The company is tightly controlled by founder, Li Shufu, a farmer’s son, who leveraged a motorcycle parts business into the successful and fast-growing company it is today. At the press conference Sunday in Goteborg, Sweden, Li said, “I want to emphasize that Volvo is Volvo and Geely is Geely — Volvo will be run by Volvo management. We are determined to preserve the distinct identity of the Volvo brand."

Geely has been in the running to purchase Volvo since fall 2009, but issues of financing and trade secrets had to be overcome. In addition, there was resistance from Swedish labor and political influencers to the deal. The near devastation of the Saab brand in 2009, helped grease the skids for the Chinese deal to happen.

The challenge remains for Geely Auto to produce up-scale cars for the masses at affordable prices. The average car price in China is $17,000 (J.D. Power & Associates). The Volvo brand will be a luxury item in the Chinese car market that forecasts a jump in purchases from 300,000 in 2009 to 650,000 by 2015.

Maud Olofsson, Swedish deputy prime minister summed it up thus: “The future road for Volvo Cars is now defined. Regardless of who owns Volvo Cars, its brand will still be Swedish."

A brand with a distinct DNA such as Volvo, questions comes to mind - What makes a brand a brand and how will such real and perceived cultural differences and objectives - affect the outward perception of the brand? More on this when, I have some more time.

Social networking websites are eliminating the once popular appeal of college yearbooks reports the AP. Though it is difficult to assess just what this change means – if anything – to students and professors in terms of their relationships, the demise of the college yearbook underscores the declining presence of print publications in our lives.

The Columbia Scholastic Press Association's executive director, Edmund Sullivan, says that students have been steadily losing interest in yearbooks for years, thanks – not surprisingly – to sites like Facebook and Myspace. "The Internet has blown down the four walls of a campus in a traditional sense. And it has blown off the covers on the yearbook," he said.

In fact, the University of Virginia is forgoing its yearbook – for the first time since 1887. Publishers explained that there just isn't enough money or appreciation in an age where students can instantaneously publish photos online for free.

High school yearbooks, interestingly, aren’t experiencing the same level of flagging popularity. "At a high school, you're required to be within the four walls of an institution, and in college you're not," said Vicky Wolfe, who served as "Corks and Curls" editor in 1994. The experience shared by high school students is much different that those shared by college students.

This point, however, may have an important branding lesson in it for both print and online publications. After all, high school students are just as obsessed with technology – if not more so – than college students. So what is it about the high school experience that makes people more prone to wanting an official, traditional yearbook? And how can publishing and tech brands capitalize on this phenomenon?

But those brands should act fast if they want to appeal to college students. Purdue, Old Dominion, and Mississippi State have also scrapped their yearbooks in favor of social networking and picture sharing sites. But not all hope is lost. Mary Jane, a junior at Virginia Wesleyan College, explains: "I grew up with yearbooks, and it was a big part of my childhood. Who's to say that Facebook is going to be around in 20 years?" Yeah, right.

Does this mean the end of Skype's free phone service? Why is Verizon handing its users something they’d never expect – Skype! Is it just another one of those catch-filled ploys to get people to switch over or buy a phone?

Skype, the formerly Swedish-based company that was founded in 2003, is a computer software application that enables users to make phone calls over the Internet. The application is free just as long as users call computer-to-computer – however, if one were to call a cell phone or landline, there would be varying, yet still reasonable, fees. eBay purchased the booming startup in 2005 for $2.6 billion, and has propelled its user-ship to over 520 million worldwide.

Although, Skype service has been offered free on the IPhone for over a year using wifi. Starting in March 2010, Verizon will offer Skype as a perk in nine of their 3G smartphones – including the Blackberry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630, as well as the Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris and Motorola Devour, and others down the line.

The partnership will hand Verizon customers “unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to any Skype user; call international phone numbers at Skype Out calling rates; send and receive instant messages to other Skype users; and stay continuously connected and clued into friends’ online presence.” It may seem strange that Verizon would join forces with the type of service that could spell the end for telephone service as we know it, However, Verizon is very slippery – and Skype simply represents another company switching to the dark side.

It’s disquieting when companies seek new or revitalized package design solutions for their products when they aren’t taking a serious look at their overall branding efforts. Packaging, when properly developed, refers back to the brand. But if that brand has lost its relevance or has never established clear differentiation -- if it needs to reconnect with consumers or has become a commodity -- simply refreshing packaging will not lead to desired results.

For brands to be truly resonant, new thinking must permeate the entire company from top to bottom. Today’s successful brands must:

• Be disruptive and creative. OXO has redesigned the most mundane of objects like the measuring cup and vegetable peeler in a whole new way to make it easier for everyone, especially aging and handicapped people, to easily execute household chores, creating strong brand adherents.

• Generate excitement. The master at this, Apple, has built buzz about the imminent launch of its new, long-awaited multimedia tablet device… ambitiously stating the company is going to carve out a new product category—yet again!

• Entertain. Unilever’s Axe brand of grooming products ingeniously aims at a young men’s market by focusing on building a brand that ensures positive experiences between them and young females in a modern version of the Dating Game.

• Engage. Crayola continues to engage even today’s high tech kids. By moving away from its former branding as an art supply company to a provider of childhood creativity, the brand remains vibrant and relevant.

Brands that do not meet the expectations of today’s consumer are being summarily dismissed. Brands must be fluid and dynamic. Since the consumer is rapidly changing, as well as consumer culture, the research suggests that marketers need to stay on top of their brands, constantly adapting in a proactive manner, rather than reacting when their brands start losing relevance.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen coined the phrase “disruptive technology”. Disrupters think of a better way to offer simpler, better performing or problem-solving products -- and product packaging -- for consumers. They create excitement in the process. Excitement leads to buzz. Buzz leads to customer engagement.

People are attracted to the brands that deliver creativity, excitement, or entertainment value; an invitation to engage or a promise to help simplify their complicated lives. That’s why some brands -- but fewer and fewer these days -- command so much attention in the marketplace.

But here’s an important point: brands can’t simply launch one exciting concept and then sit back. They have to continue to create excitement. If that sounds tough—not every company can be like Apple right?—it may not be as hard as it sounds. Creativity and innovation feeds on itself and brands can borrow a page from companies that are far smaller than Apple or Google.

Think of smaller companies that have strong brand adherents. They’ve consistently delivered due to the ongoing energy they create:

• Method cleaning products. Strong point of view: “A Cleaner Clean”. Unconventional, see-through packaging; very unlikethe rest of the cleaning category. The inferred message: we have nothing to hide. The Method brand is about: “efficacy, safety, environment, design, fragrance”. Result: consumers are turning to Method in increasing numbers.

• Stonyfield Farm yogurt. “Cause” branding a commodity like yogurt took it from limited natural store distribution to a mainstream player. The message: “Health for you. Health for the planet”. The brand represents unflagging commitment, passion and vision to ideals consumers can trust and believe in. And how about the packaging? The iconic cow and Stonyfield Farm banner with the word “Organic” beneath it are highly recognizable— to its many brand loyalists.

Bottom line: new vision and approaches can add significantly more value to brands over their competitors. The brands I’ve cited could easily have become commodities but they didn’t fall into the ho-hum, business-as-usual brand management trap. They chose to brand with more creativity and energy than the norm. They stuck to their vision, while changing with their customers to remain relevant, continuing to generate positive energy. They’ve been richly rewarded by consumers, as a result.

If your brand is less than exciting, reposition, re-brand and then repackage. Deliver positive energy and relevance to consumers and they’ll not only become loyal, they’ll engage their communities to become loyal, too. Become one of the all-too-few brands that matter.

More than 77 million dogs are owned by people in over 45 million households in the US. A statistic advertisers like Subaru have noticed. In fact, half of Subaru drivers own a pet.

That's why the car company's latest ad campaign focuses squarely on not just the owners, but their dogs – who are shown "driving" the Subaru Forester in an ad that carries the tagline "Dog tested. Dog approved." The ads started running this past weekend.

Subaru has gone a step further by partnering with the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). At "Share the Love," a recent Subaru sales event during which new car buyers could choose to donate $250 to one of five charities, the ASPCA was the top choice.

Subaru began an integrated marketing strategy two years ago that includes arranging for media placements and sponsorships. The car company has worked deals with Animal Planet shows "Groomer Has It" and "Dogs 101," and will be advertising during National Geographic's "Dog Whisperer" marathon on February 15 and "The Westminster Dog Show" on the USA cable network on February 15 and 16.

As for the ads themselves, Kevin Mayer, Subaru's director of marketing communications, thought animal actors Olive and Zelda were impressive. "The dogs were such good stunt dogs and did a lot of the facial expressions just naturally," he says. Rumor has it that, instead of union scale, they're willing to work for food.