Is there a more powerful brand than Santa Claus? When it comes to holidays the only brand image that could potentially rival him is Cupid for Valentine's Day.
For the past 100+ years, Santa Claus has dominated the holiday season. He is ubiquitous. From TV specials to in-person appearances, to songs and even NORAD tracking his every move. Parents talk about him, children sing about him, and people wait 30+ minutes to have their children's photos taken with him. When it comes to conventional wisdom it seems no other brand has the "muscle" that Santa Claus has.
Yet this weekend, the power of Santa Claus was exposed. Yes, Virginia, another brand is more powerful than Santa Claus.
I took my sons to the New England Model Train Expo. There were 15+ model train sets on display, ranging from G gauge to N gauge. The show floor was packed. One of the selling points was that children could meet Santa Claus.
Yet at the Expo, Santa sat forlorn and alone. Another brand trumped Santa.
G-gauge Thomas and Percy model trains which were set up on the floor right next to Santa Claus drew hordes of admiring children. While Santa sat alone, with no one to tell him their Christmas wishes.
So based on my (very unscientific) survey of children, it is safe to say that Santa is no longer the most powerful brand at Christmas. Rather it is an unassuming little blue steam engine.
Tags:
brand awareness,
consumer
Posted by Mark McClennan on December 9, 2009 at 1:00 PM
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As we all hear reports about some parts of the economy rebounding, while others still lag, it's natural to wonder where marketing budgets will land in 2010.
Many of the marketers we work with are either just finishing budget planning for 2010 or are working with their CEOs or boards to determine how much their budgets will be. As they're muscling through this process, some marketers are supporting their requests for more dollars by looking to their peers for signs of what they're doing.
It's with this in mind that we spoke with 20 top marketing and business execs to get their take on where budgets are going, as well as tips they'd give other marketers during budget season. We took their feedback and assembled it in this white paper with the hope that it will help those marketers still fighting the good fight.
Tags:
marketing budgets,
marketing white paper,
PR white paper,
technology marketing
Posted by Laura Kempke on December 8, 2009 at 1:58 PM
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Over the past week, we have had two of the biggest consumer shopping events of the past year - Black Friday and CyberMonday. The media buzz about each of these artificial shopping holidays has been enormous. That caused me to ask - who won the shopping PR war, Black Friday or Cyber Monday? (Note: Schwartz has some clients that capitalized on one or both of these shopping events).
While it seemed obvious to me that Black Friday would dominate traditional media (who can resist a live shot of the lines at 3 a.m., pushing and shoving?) - what would be the case in the social media world, where there was likely a bias towards online shopping?
Last night, I used Radian 6 to conduct a quick audit. The results were surprising. Black Friday crushed CyberMonday when it came to the amount of discussion in the social media world (blogs, Twitter, etc.). The chart below tells the story:
Overall social media coverage volumes for Black Friday were much greater than CyberMonday (and the spike around the actual day was much higher as well). Aggregating data, Black Friday has 84% of the overall share of voice, with CyberMonday securing 16% (482,000 to 95,000).
That is interesting and shows that Black Friday dominated the discussion. But how did it do with key message penetration?
When it comes to promoting deals and discounts, retailers were more effective overall with CyberMonday compared to Black Friday.
Overall, 45% of CyberMonday coverage highlighted deals or discounts, while just 31% of the coverage of Black Friday highlighted deals or discounts. Much of the rest of the coverage was around opening times, lines, etc.
The channels used to communicate the deals were interesting.
Fully one in four deals were communicated via Twitter. With 52% of Black Friday Deals and 64% of Cyber Monday deals communicated on blogs.
What conclusions can we take from this?
1) Both Cyber Monday and Black Friday are very successful when it comes to generating discussion in the social media space, although Black Friday coverage was overwhelmingly dominant.
2) Retailers do a relatively good job communicating deals around both events, although as a percentage, retailers do a better job around CyberMonday.
3) Traditional and social/online work well together in retail, just like they do in public relations.
Note: For my fellow measurement purists. Variant spellings of both BlackFriday and Cyber Monday were used to catch as much as possible.
Tags:
Black Friday,
consumer,
cybermonday,
measurement
Posted by Mark McClennan on December 1, 2009 at 9:46 AM
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