Before the shipwreck of Costa Concordia, Carnival Corp was seeing huge strides in overall sales and Wall Street numbers. Everything was looking up. Today, shares of Carnival have dropped significantly, according to Forbes.com. PRWeek estimates that Carnival will lose more than $90 million in earnings in 2012 due to this event. Here’s what we would have done:
A huge part of public relations and brand marketing is reputation management. IN small terms, that means monitoring social networks, news feeds and blogs for any possible disgruntled consumer or unhappy fan. In big money terms, this means taking a disaster that is truly unimaginable, such as the Costa Concordia shipwreck, from becoming a brand destroying, company crushing event…no small feat.
Brand Risk Taking
Every brand takes risks, but hopefully these risks are calculated and are strategically taken in order to increase brand equity. The Costa Concordia, owned by Carnival Corp, took one huge risk in the name of increasing brand awareness that ultimately has tarnished the brand forever.
Let’s talk brands, as we always do. On Monday, Bloomberg released their 2011 greatest brand rankings, something that we at Quaintise are very keenly watching. As part of Interbrand’s Best Global Brands of 2011, the list includes the most influential, highest value brands in the world. What did they come up with? Take a look.
Yesterday we talked about Facebook’s Edgerank and what it all means. In social media marketing and brand marketing, understanding how to reach your target audience is paramount, so understanding Facebook’s Edgerank should really be second to none. There are hundreds of marketing strategies to remember when marketing to that specific Facebook audience, but above all is taking advantage of Edgerank. So, now that you understand how it works, let’s take a look at how you can use it to your advantage.
Step One – Create an Accessible Facebook Page
Be inviting in everything that you do no Facebook. Remain positive at all times, and encourage interaction both between the brand and the audience, and between the audience themselves. Build your page with less professionalism and more fun…this is Facebook after all. Remember who you are targeting, who your audience is, what gender and how old they are, and build out some tabs just for them.
Facebook’s EdgeRank; it’s either silently killing your social media marketing efforts or making your life very easy. Much like Google, Yahoo and Bing rate websites and rank them based on their overall score (Google uses PageRank), so too does Facebook, ranking all of your Friends and Businesses based on a variety of aspects that contribute to the EdgeRank. In online brand marketing, understanding how EdgeRank works and how to beat it is crucial to getting your brand message seen and heard on the most influential social media outlet in existence.
What is EdgeRank?
EdgeRank is the probability that your status update, post, photo, link or video will show up in a Fan’s ‘News Feed.’ A few months back, Facebook renovated its entire platform, literally taking EdgeRank to the next level.
As we work out way well into 2012, it’s always fun to look back at what others have done in 2011 and base our future marketing plans avoiding every mistake that the others have made. Last week we talked about setting yourself up for marketing success in 2012 with the right outlook, plans and strategy. It’s also useful to look back at what marketing strategies others used in 2011 and how miserably they failed.
Inc.com’s Top 10 Brand Disasters of 2011
At the end of 2011, last week, Inc.com released its top 10 failed marketing disasters of 2011, and we couldn’t agree more. Here are our top 5 brand blunders of 2011 from the Inc.com list:
Deciding on your business New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 is all about setting yourself up for success. You are going to make 2012 an amazing year for your business. Think positively, but realistically, and jot down some ideas for what you want to happen in the next year. Do you want more Fans and brand advocates? Do you want to take on less of the work load? Do you want a greater brand and marketing presence? How much more money do you realistically want your business to make in 2012?
Resolution #1
Brand Audit – Every business needs to revaluate their brand once a year, and what better time than now? You’re number one New Year’s Resolution should be to have a professional marketing firm audit your brand. From this audit they will be able to tell you if your brand message is accurate and effective, if you’re demographic is targeted properly, if your business is consistently sticking to that brand message, and much more. There is truly no better way to start off 2012 on the right track then by having a brand audit ran.
Happy Holidays! This purgatory week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is commonly known as the week when you sit back and reanalyze your business. You take a look at your brand, your marketing efforts, your message, advertising, and overall financial picture. It’s also when you set business goals for 2012, and jot down your business New Year’s Resolutions. As marketing professionals, we’d like to assist you in setting those business New Year’s Resolutions for 2012.
Learning from 2011
Before you set up your New Year’s Resolutions for 2012, take a look at what worked and what didn’t work in 2011 in terms of brand marketing and advertising. Did you run any highly successful advertising campaigns? What can you take away from those successful campaigns and tweak for 2012?
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How important is brand trust? Undoubtedly, brand trust is the single, most sought-after objective of every marketing strategy. Brand trust equals brand equity, which turns into amazing profit for any given company. But how does brand trust work? Martin Lindstrom, one of TIME Magazine’s “World’s 100 Most Influential People” took an interesting look into brand trust and product endorsement.
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‘Tis the season for controversy. The TICL reality show “All-American Muslim” is garnering a lot of it, and the brands that have decided to pull all advertising from the show are taking the brunt. Lowe’s pulled all advertising last week, as we mentioned in an earlier article, and this week the travel website Kayak has pulled advertising as well. When you advertise during a specific show it says something about your brand, but when you pull advertising from that show is says something completely different. What message are you sending to your audience?
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