It’s a Color-Coded World
Consumers have long been trained to associate certain colors with specific brands. Take rental cars: I’m confident if I show you the color red and ask you about a rental car brand, you’ll think of Avis, orange will make you think of Budget, gold will make you think of Hertz, and you’ll associate green with National. Similarly, in the telecommunications business, it’s as if representatives from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint...
State Farm Makes Plans to Sell Car Insurance Customer Data
State Farm has developed plans to sell customer data, allowing advertisers to create highly targeted pitches based on where, when and how people drive. In a patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, State Farm proposes gathering information about drivers’ routes and stops from vehicles’ sensors, navigation systems, cameras or other devices. State Farm would send data on driver’s habits to “another unit or...
Avoiding ‘Middle of the Road’ Brand Positioning
To effectively reach millennials, marketers must leverage research and its resulting consumer insights to identify and quantify new brand positionings as either cutting-edge or nostalgic. Just stay out of the middle lane. When researching and developing brand positioning, many marketers try to create a space in which they can appeal to as many consumers as possible, ideally striving to be the No. 1 brand in their category. Marketers...
Play Offense, Not Defense to Win Hispanic Engagement
Everyone knows that Hispanics are a fast growing, key group of consumers in the marketplace, but do advertisers’ investments reflect that? In a recent Media Post article, Jose Villa writes about the visible trend of marketers increasing investments in the Hispanic Market as a defensive move. Advertisers are experiencing decreases in sales among their General Market target, so they then decide to invest money behind strategies that...
The Risks and Rewards of Competitive Advertising
When one brand dominates a category, it’s not uncommon for the “wannabes” to take direct shots at the leader. In the mobile device wars, Samsung launched its “The Next Big Thing” ad, which negatively portrays Apple’s products in comparison to Samsung’s. But Samsung isn’t the only one attacking Apple. Microsoft has also jumped on the Apple-bashing bandwagon by featuring ads that pit Cortana, Microsoft’s audio-enabled smartphone...