Battle of the Brands

Battle of the Brands
Brand Flakes for Breakfast
Is a parent company responsible for maintaining message parity throughout its brands? Darryl Ohrt examines an interesting mashup of one of the recent Dove Campaign for Real Beauty spots. The producer of the mashup clearly thinks that Dove’s parent company, Unilever, doesn’t exactly practice what it preaches. Unilever also owns Axe, a sort of “Dove for men” line of soaps and colognes, which runs numerous ads featuring women as sex objects, something the Dove campaign clearly opposes. Is this a problem for Unilever, or is the fact that Axe and Dove are two very different brands who happened to share a holding company an excuse for the apparent hypocrisy? “Granted - separate brand teams, probably separate agencies - and likely entirely separate companies, outside of the Unilever holding company status. But if you're going to take a strong positioning against sexy advertising...well, you might want to look into your own back yard first.”

Social Media Overload and Your Personal Brand
Personal Branding Blog
Dealing with the nearly endless array of social networks flooding the Web, how do we sift through and discover the networks that will best benefit our personal brand? Dan Schwabel examines the issue, noting that with full-time jobs and personal lives, there is really only so much time we can dedicate to the often tedious process (bacn, adding the same contacts repeatedly, etc) of managing our social networks. I agree with his idea that you should stick with the big ones, but want to stress not to rule out some of the niche networks. The best advice is to determine your goals and find the networks that best meet those goals. “We join networks to solve certain problems and we hear about them through word-of-mouth marketing. In general, if you can’t pinpoint a reason to join one of these networks, then you are wasting your time. It is a better and more productive use of your time to stick to the ‘usual suspects.’”

17 Ways to Tweet Better
What’s Next Blog
Participating in social media requires interesting content. Not everything has to be the next blockbuster viral sweeping the web (and trust me, it won’t be), but if you can’t raise the interest of your target audience, you’re not going to get far in achieving your social media goals. This aspect may make using Twitter wisely challenging for some people; how can a person be compelling with only 140 characters to work with? BL Ochman offers up some great tips in effectively using Twitter without boring the pants off your followers. “Some people consistently write Twitter posts that inform, break news, engage, or raise thoughtful questions. Others tell us what they’re having for lunch or when they’re going to work out. Or what cute thing their cat is doing now. Yawn. Here are some winning practices of top Tweeters.”

Comments

[Shel Holtz]

You beat me to the Axe/Dove video commentary, Sarah -- I stumbled on this on YouTube a couple days ago and have been stewing over how to approach it in a post. Bottom line, I don't think it's an issue, nor is it hypocritical, given the "rules" in an era characterized by growth through acquisition. Brands can be independent regardless of their ultimate corporate ownership. I think I'll still post about this -- but point to your post (and your Utterz!).

[Sarah Wurrey]

Thanks for your thoughts Shel; I agree it can get thorny when one company owns so many competing brands. A uniform message is probably next to impossible.

Looking forward to your post on the subject!